Celina Jeitley Biography

Celina when literally translated means the goddess of moon. How prophetic of her parents who named her so! Today she

shines like a moon on the skyline of glamour world, having made it big in India and missing the top slot in the

world by a small margin. She was fourth runner up in the Miss Universe beauty pageant of year 2001, held in Puerto

Rico. Celina is one of the latest additions to India’s ever growing list of defence personnel’s daughters who made

it big in beauty pageants and then entered the film world.

She is daughter of a Punjabi father who was an Indian Army officer. Her mother is an Afghan and is a child

psychologist by profession. She was born in 1981, and stands 5”6’ in socks. Her nickname is Chinky. Her schooling

was done all over the country due to the frequent transfers of her father. She had to change thirteen schools till

her Board exams. Presently her family stays in Bangalore. Celina’s past five generations have served the army and

there was a point of time in her life, when she was also tinkering with the idea of taking the Combined Defence

Services exam.

But destiny willed otherwise. She graduated in Commerce and fetched her a marketing job for a Cell phone company in

Kolkatta. There she participated in a local beauty contest just for the heck of participation and to everybody’s

surprise she emerged victorious. This gave her a boost and she sent her pictures for the Miss India contest. Just a

day before the preliminary rounds were to begin Celina got the invitation to participate. Soon she walked away with

the coveted, Miss India crown bagging almost every title from Best Skin to Best Clothes to MTVs most wanted.

This title win enabled her to participate in the Miss universe title. But Indian girls had won it for three

consecutive years. There was an immense pressure on her persona with press flooding her with questions about

rigging. She was weighed down by this pre –contest scepticism and it did cast its impact on the final outcome.

Celina was adjudged fourth runner up from amongst 83 contestants.

Having joined films she made her debut with Feroze Khan’s thriller Jansheen with Fardeen Khan. Despite her exposure

role the film could not do a brisk business. She has also starred in Khel, which had in its cast Sunny Deol and

Sunil Shetty besides the former test cricketer Ajay Jadeja. But despite all the euphoria it generated, Khel came a

cropper at the box office.