For an actor who has spent more than a decade navigating Hindi cinema, Yami Gautam's latest milestone appears to have taken her back to the beginning. Rather than speaking of the National Award as the culmination of her journey, the actor said she was still processing the honour and felt the same excitement she had when she was starting out.
Yami has often moved between commercial entertainers and performance-driven roles, with projects such as Vicky Donor, Uri: The Surgical Strike and Article 370 marking different phases of her career. Her performance as intelligence officer Zooni Haksar in Article 370 has now brought her the country's top film honour for acting.
Speaking after receiving the Best Actress award at the 72nd National Film Awards, Yami had a message for aspiring artistes who come to Mumbai from different parts of the country with dreams of making it in the film industry. “You don’t know what life has for you. Keep doing hardwork and one day this will happen,” she said, urging them to keep working and doing good work.
The actor also admitted that she does not know exactly where she has reached in her journey, adding that there is still much for her to learn and many more roles to take up. In another interaction, she described the National Award as the “biggest validation” for an artiste and said she was still trying to absorb the significance of the recognition.
Yami's remarks came after she received the award from President Droupadi Murmu at the ceremony in Ekta Nagar, Kevadia, Gujarat. Her husband and filmmaker, Aditya Dhar, was also present at the event. The ceremony recognised films certified in 2024, with Article 370 emerging among the notable winners.
Interestingly, Yami said the recognition had not made her feel like a veteran of the industry. Instead, she described herself as still carrying “the energy of a newcomer for whom everything is so big and so special”. She added that Article 370 had given her much as an actor and allowed her to do the kind of work she had wanted to explore for a long time.
Alongside Yami's acting honour, Article 370 won the Best Feature Film award, while the film's music also earned recognition. Directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale and produced by Jyoti Deshpande, Aditya Dhar and Lokesh Dhar, the film featured Yami as Zooni Haksar, an intelligence officer involved in the events surrounding the abrogation of Article 370.
