Jacqueline Fernandez is an actress and model. Her father, Elroy, is from Sri Lanka while her mother, Kim, is from Malaysia. Elroy Fernandez, a musician, relocated to Bahrain in the 1980s.

Jacqueline Fernandez has three older siblings. She did her schooling in Bahrain and graduated in mass communication from Sydney university, Australia. She has learnt Arabic, Spanish and French. She was also a television reporter in Sri Lanka for a while.

From a young age, Jacqueline Fernandez wanted to become an actress. She won the Miss Universe Sri Lanka pageant in 2006 and started getting modelling assignments. She then appeared in Bathiya and Santhush’s pop music album Ayubowan – Namasthe for the song ‘O Sathi’.

Jacqueline Fernandez travelled to India for a modelling assignment in 2009. While in India, she received training in acting from well-known theatre director Barry John. The same year, she made her debut in Hindi cinema with Sujoy Ghosh’s fantasy film Aladin (2009) opposite Riteish Deshmukh. In 2010, she played the lead in the sci-fi film Jaane Kahan Se Aayi Hai, again opposite Deshmukh. However, the movie did not do well at the box office.

In 2011, she acted in Mahesh Bhatt’s psychological horror movie Murder 2 opposite Emraan Hashmi and was praised for her performance. She then acted in Sajid Khan’s hit comedy film Housefull 2 along with Asin, Akshay Kumar and John Abraham.

Her next film was Race 2 in the year 2013. She undertook training in fencing and acrobatics for her role. She also did a dance number, ‘Jaadu Ki Jhappi’, in Prabhu Deva’s film Ramaiya Vastavaiya the same year.

She gained popularity with Sajid Nadiadwala’s Kick in 2014, in which she starred opposite Salman Khan. Her next films in 2015 were Vikramjit Singh’s directorial debut Roy and Karan Malhotra’s sports drama film Brothers. She made her Hollywood debut the same year with the British horror film Definition Of Fear.

In 2016, she appeared in three movies — Housefull 3, A Flying Jatt and Dishoom. She was one of the judges for the television dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa that year.

In 2017, Fernandez acted in the English-Sri Lankan crime-thriller According To Mathew / Anuragini. She then played the lead opposite Sidharth Malhotra in A Gentleman. Her next was David Dhawan's hit movie Judwaa 2 in which she worked with Varun Dhawan and Taapsee Pannu. In 2018, she appeared in the multi-starrer film Race 3.

Her upcoming movie is Tarun Mansukhani's Drive opposite Sushant Singh Rajput.

Fernandez is also involved in philanthropic causes like animal welfare, children's education and raising funds for flood victims. In 2014, PETA (India) named her ‘Woman Of The Year’ for advocating animal protection.

For her performance in Aladin, she won the IIFA Debut of the Year (Female) award, the Stardust Exciting New Face award and the Central European Bollywood Best Breakthrough Performance (Female) award. She also won the PETA (India) award for Digital Activism in 2018.