Mumbai, August 5: Genelia is a Marathi speaking Christian from North Konkan. She was raised in the Bandra suburb of Mumbai. Her first debut was Tujhe Meri Kasam. Genelia was selected among 300 girls, who had auditioned for the movie. She signed three movies simultaneously in three different languages, Tujhe Meri Kasam (Hindi), Boys (Tamil), and Satyam (Telugu).

In June 2010, she was the subject of a controversy, when a Tamil daily reported that she had attended the controversial 2010 IIFA Awards in Colombo. Several Bollywood actors and the South Indian film industry had boycotted the event, over the alleged killing of Tamilian civilians at the height of the conflict between the Sri Lanka Army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The rumours of her visit to Colombo started after her friend Ritesh Deshmukh was seen at the festival in Colombo. Immediately, various Tamil groups and Kollywood associations demanded her films to be banned.

In 2011, a controversy broke out for her film Force, in a wedding sequence scene of herself and John Abraham. The wedding ceremony and rituals conducted were so authentic that they would have actually been husband and wife in real life. Instead of a junior artiste, a real priest was called for the scene. Again, following the reports of Ritesh Deshmukh and D’Souza’s marriage plans, the priest landed up at producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s office to register a complaint. He insisted that the couple couldn’t get married, as D’Souza has been already married to John Abraham, as all marriage rituals were observed, from wearing a mangalsutra (a sacred thread is worn by Indian women as a symbol of their marriage), to exchanging garlands, and taking the seven steps around the holy fire. Shah dismissed the claims as a publicity stunt.