Manoj Bajpai was born on 23 April 1969 (52 years old) in Belwa village, Bihar. Born in a Brahmin family, Manoj has five more siblings. They are married, they had 2 marriages in which the first marriage was not successful due to some reason after Manoj married a Muslim woman (Shabana Raza) whose second name is also Neha. Both have a very lovely daughter named Ava Nayla.

Manoj Bajpai is not needed in any introduction today, even after reaching the pinnacle of success, he likes to be simple, he does not consider himself a big man.

Early life :

After getting elementary education in a government school, he came to Delhi on the pretext of higher education.

Coming to Delhi at the age of 17, Manoj did a lot of theater. Manoj did about 400 plays in those three years.

He got the support of director Anubhav Sinha in his exit from Delhi. Anubhav and Manoj were together at Mandi House in Delhi. Anubhav came to Mumbai from Delhi and started assisting director Pankaj Parashar.

Manoj told that –

“After coming to Mumbai from Delhi, he made a chawl with five friends as his hideout. Once, three projects he got went out of his hands in a single day. Once during the very first shot, he got She was asked to leave the studio and the assistant director had torn her pictures too. Unable to pay the chawl rent and Vada Pav was costly to her. But her hunger was less than the hunger to get work. He kept trying and after almost four years of struggle, he got work in Mahesh Bhatt’s TV serial ‘Swabhimaan’. In 1994, he used to get 1500 rupees per episode for working in it. “

His entry in films was with Shekhar Kapur’s ‘Bandit Queen‘. Then he continued to get roles in films like ‘Drokhkal‘, ‘Dastak‘, ‘Daur‘, ‘Tamanna‘. Manoj considers Ram Gopal Varma’s ‘Satya‘ in 1998 as his real debut and this film changed his life. He was recognized all over the country with the role of ‘Bhikhu Mhatre‘. He also received the National Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role.

In those days the signing amount was given in suitcases, he says that he returned many such suitcases because the roles were not to his liking. He denied this when the circumstances were against him. He raised his level further with films like ‘Shool‘, ‘Pinjar‘, ‘Gangs of Wasseypur‘ and ‘Aligarh‘.

The web series ‘The Family Man’, which came on the OTT platform Amazon Prime in 2019–21, once again brought him into the limelight and it proved to be a huge success. In return for playing the role of the family man, he was given Rs 10 crore.

Moments of struggle :

• Manoj was rejected four times from the National School of Drama.
• There had come a time when he had reached near suicide due to depression, then his friends supported him and he could recover again.