Anita Hassanandani’s Journey: From Career Setbacks and Depression to Reinventing Herself on Television

The Celebrity Hour

For millions of Indian television viewers, Anita Hassanandani is instantly recognisable as one of the medium’s most enduring faces. From Kkavyanjali to Yeh Hai Mohabbatein and Naagin, she has spent years playing characters that became part of prime-time television culture.

But the longevity of her career can make it easy to overlook how uncertain that journey has sometimes been.

Behind the successful television shows and more than two decades in entertainment is a career that has included unsuccessful films, professional rejection, depression, typecasting, a long break from full-time television and the challenge of returning to work after becoming a mother.

Anita's story is therefore less about uninterrupted success than about repeatedly finding a way to begin again.

An Unexpected Entry Into Entertainment

Acting was not necessarily the life Anita had imagined for herself.

Looking back at her journey in a 2025 interview, she described herself as coming from a humble, middle-class background and said she had never imagined becoming an actor.

Her early career eventually took her across different corners of the entertainment industry. She appeared on television and worked in films across multiple Indian languages, including Telugu, Tamil and Hindi.

One of her important early television roles was Tanushree in Kabhii Sautan Kabhii Sahelii. Her film career included projects such as Kucch To Hai, Krishna Cottage and Koi Aap Sa.

The variety looked promising. But being visible did not necessarily mean that every opportunity translated into success.

When Koi Aap Sa Became a Painful Turning Point

One of the most difficult periods of Anita's professional life followed the failure of the 2005 film Koi Aap Sa.

Years later, she spoke candidly about how strongly she had believed in the project.

In a 2015 interview, Anita recalled having worked extremely hard on the film and expecting it to perform well. Its failure affected her far beyond an ordinary professional disappointment.

She said she spent months crying, became depressed and gained weight during the period.

It eventually changed her perspective towards the profession.

Instead of allowing the success or failure of an individual project to determine her self-worth, Anita gradually began recognising what she had already achieved from where she had started.

The experience would become one of the defining lessons of her career: ambition mattered, but allowing a career setback to consume her personal life came at too high a cost.

Television Gave Her the Stability Films Couldn't

If cinema did not deliver the breakthrough Anita once hoped for, television gave her something arguably more lasting — recognition.

Her association with producer Ekta Kapoor became particularly significant during her career. Anita has publicly credited both her mother and Kapoor with supporting her through difficult periods, including the emotional fallout from professional failures.

Kkavyanjali, in which Anita played Anjali, became an important chapter in establishing her as a television star.

But another transformation was still ahead.

In 2013, Anita entered Yeh Hai Mohabbatein as Shagun.

It was a character who could be glamorous, antagonistic, vulnerable and complicated — and Anita's portrayal helped turn Shagun into one of the show's most recognisable figures.

The role also reinforced something about Anita's career that her film setbacks had perhaps obscured: television audiences had developed a strong connection with her.

She subsequently continued appearing in television projects including Naagin 3, while also taking part in reality programming.

Success Brought Another Problem: Being Typecast

A memorable negative character can be a blessing for an actor. It can also become a professional trap.

After establishing herself in such roles, Anita found that similar characters increasingly came her way.

While discussing her television comeback in 2024, she acknowledged the difficulty of escaping the negative-role bracket once an actor becomes associated with it on Indian television.

That presented a different kind of career struggle.

She was no longer an actor trying to become recognised. She was a recognised actor trying to ensure that recognition did not restrict the kind of work she could do.

Motherhood Changed the Equation Again

Anita married businessman Rohit Reddy in 2013, and the couple welcomed their son Aaravv in 2021.

Motherhood brought another major pause to her professional life.

After Yeh Hai Mohabbatein ended in 2019, Anita stayed away from substantial full-time television work for several years. Although she made a brief appearance in Hum Rahein Na Rahein Hum, she did not regard it as her proper comeback.

The reason was deeply personal.

Anita later explained that she initially thought she would return to acting relatively quickly after having her child. But whenever opportunities arrived, she found herself reconsidering the idea of spending long hours away from her son.

There was ambition on one side and motherhood on the other.

And the decision was not as simple as choosing one.

“You Have to Restart”

When Anita eventually prepared for a full-fledged return, she also spoke about an uncomfortable reality she had encountered.

According to her, returning to work after becoming a mother did not simply mean continuing from where she had stopped.

It felt like starting again.

She said she had to make people in the industry aware that she was ready to work and wanted substantial roles again.

Her comments highlight an issue that extends beyond one actor's experience. A career break can alter how a performer is perceived, and for women in entertainment, motherhood can add another layer to that transition.

For Anita, returning meant proving her professional appetite again despite already having decades of work behind her.

Finding Her Way Back to the Camera

Suman Indori marked Anita's full-fledged television comeback after roughly five years away from a substantial daily-show role.

She chose the project carefully.

Anita explained at the time that if she was going to leave her young son at home and return to demanding shooting schedules, the role needed to justify that sacrifice.

There was still what she described as “mom guilt”, but there was also the realisation that becoming a mother did not have to mean abandoning her own ambitions.

It represented another reinvention in a career already filled with them.

A Career Defined by Second Chances

Anita has openly acknowledged that films did not give her the kind of impact she may once have wanted.

But she also learned to look at that disappointment differently.

Rather than measuring her career solely against what did not happen in cinema, she has spoken about appreciating the recognition, longevity and awards television brought her.

That perspective is perhaps the most revealing part of her journey.

Anita Hassanandani's career has never followed one straight upward trajectory.

She has experienced early opportunities and disappointing films. She has spoken about depression during a career low and subsequently rebuilt herself through television. She became enormously recognisable in negative roles, only to encounter the limitations of typecasting. Then, after motherhood and years away from substantial television work, she faced the challenge of establishing herself again.

Each phase required a different version of resilience.

The young actor once devastated by a failed film eventually became a performer capable of looking at failure as temporary.

Years later, reflecting on those difficult periods, Anita said she wished she could tell her younger self not to stress so much and recognised that professional work comes and goes while personal peace matters more.

That lesson may explain her longevity better than any individual hit.

In an industry obsessed with breakthroughs, Anita Hassanandani's journey offers another definition of success: sometimes a career is not defined by how quickly someone reaches the top, but by how many times they are capable of rebuilding after life knocks them off course.

The Celebrity Hour Take: 

Anita Hassanandani's story is compelling precisely because it isn't a conventional rags-to-riches narrative. She found success relatively young, lost confidence when expectations collapsed, discovered a stronger professional identity on television, stepped away when her priorities changed and then returned to an industry that had continued moving without her. More than two decades after she entered entertainment, simply continuing to find a place in an intensely competitive business may be one of her most significant achievements.