Anees Bazmee was born in Modasa, a village in Gujarat where he spent his childhood. He entered the film industry at a young age as a child artist, following which he shifted his focus to working behind the scenes and assisted Raj Kapoor on his film, Prem Rog (1982). He developed his career in the film industry by working as a dialogue writer in the mid to late 1980s with films like Lava (1985) and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). He soon graduated to writing the scripts for films, beginning with David Dhawan’s Swarg (1990). While his career as a writer continued to grow, he proceeded to add direction to his list of abilities with Hulchul (1995). Though this film received a lukewarm response, his second attempt at direction got better results as Pyar Toh Hona Hi Tha (1998) became one of the most commercially successful films of the year. In the gap of over four years until his next directorial venture, Bazmee worked on the story and dialogues of a handful of films including Sirf Tum (1999) and Raju Chacha (2000).

He returned to directing with Deewangee (2002), a crime thriller which performed fairly well commercially. Following this, Bazmee worked on a number of comedy and crime films, including No Entry (2005), Welcome (2007), and Singh is Kinng (2008). Each of these was a huge commercial success, and earned Bazmee much recognition as a comedy film maker. He is scheduled to direct a Hindi remake of the hugely popular Hollywood comedy, The Hangover (2009), to which Firoz A. Nadiadwala acquired the rights.

Bazmee turned producer for his upcoming film, Welcome Back (2015), working with Nadiadwala’s company, Base Industries Group, with whom he has collaborated multiple times. After working on this sequel to his film Welcome (2007), Bazmee is scheduled to direct yet another follow-up to an earlier work with No Entry Mein Entry.

Bazmee continues to write, though he claims it was always directing that he wanted to do most. “I always wanted to become a director ... I decided to write scripts to prove what I am capable of. As far as I am concerned, a film is largely written on paper. I consider myself a capable writer and director.”