Timeline
- 1990Born on 15 June in Bielsko-Biała, in southern Poland.She attended the Copernicus general secondary school in the city.
- 2013Appears in Dreamz as Aafreen, her first film credit in India.
- 2014Stands for the Bielsko-Biała city council on the Civic Platform list, from the last place, and receives 102 votes.She did not win a seat.
- 2016Publishes Za kulisami Bollywood, a book about her experience of working in Indian cinema, through Helion.The English title is Behind the Scenes of Bollywood.
- 2018Receives a best international actress award at the JIFFA festival, and makes her singing debut at the TVP New Year concert in Zakopane on 31 December.
- 2019Plays Maya Johnson in Chicken Curry Law and appears on the April cover of Cosmopolitan Poland.
- 2020Appears as Karolina in 365 Days, the Polish Netflix production.
- 2022Competes in the thirteenth season of Dancing with the Stars. Taniec z gwiazdami on Polsat, partnered with Rafał Maserak.
- 2023Reaches the final of the eighteenth season of Twoja twarz brzmi znajomo, appears in Królowa przetrwania, and becomes the subject of a widely covered dispute about her claimed career.
- 2025Enters Bigg Boss 19 on the premiere night of 24 August and is evicted on day 21, in the season's first double eviction.
Who Natalia Janoszek is
Natalia Magdalena Janoszek is a Polish performer whose career has run on two tracks that rarely meet. In Poland she is a television personality, known from a dance competition, an impersonation show and a survival format. In India she is the foreign actress who appeared in a handful of Hindi films, wrote a book about the experience, and later turned up on Bigg Boss.[1][2]
The Indian track is smaller than the Polish one in hours worked and larger in the way it is described. Her Hindi filmography begins with low budget productions in 2013 and 2014, reaches a supporting part in Chicken Curry Law in 2019, and includes a small role in the Netflix adaptation 365 Days. None of these is a lead in a mainstream film, and the coverage of her Indian work has often presented them as bigger than they are.[2][1]
The Polish track is more conventional and better documented. She trained in business rather than acting, entered pageants, published a book, and then spent 2022 and 2023 on the celebrity circuit of Polsat and TVN. That is the career that made her a recognisable name at home, and it is the one that explains why a Polish television audience knew her before an Indian one did.[2]
Her public profile in India rests on one label more than on any film. Bigg Boss 19 introduced her as the Videshi Gori, the foreign girl, opposite the Bhojpuri actor Neelam Giri as the Desi Chhori, and the pairing was the show's framing rather than her own description of herself.[1][3]
Early life in Bielsko-Biała
Janoszek was born on 15 June 1990 in Bielsko-Biała, an industrial city in the Silesian foothills of southern Poland. She attended the First General Secondary School named after Nicolaus Copernicus in the city, which is the kind of academic grammar school that sends its students to university rather than to drama school.[2]
Her higher education was in management, not performance. She completed the International Business Program at the Faculty of Management of the University of Warsaw. Bharat Fast describes the same qualification as a master's in international business, which is a reasonable description of a five year management programme and not a detail that any Polish source states in those words.[2][1]
The one political episode in her record comes from this period. In the 2014 local elections she stood for the Bielsko-Biała city council on the Civic Platform ticket, in the last position on the district list, and received 102 votes. She was not elected. It is a small fact that says something about the kind of public life she was aiming at before films, and it is recorded in the Polish encyclopaedia rather than in any Indian profile.[2]
She has said that she was performing on stage from the age of three, which is the sort of claim that comes from a family account rather than from a documented record. It fits the pattern of a childhood spent in dance and pageant work, but there is no independent source for the age.[1]
Pageants and the move towards India
The pageant circuit was her first profession. Bharat Fast reports that she represented Poland in more than thirty international competitions, including Miss Teen Poland, Supermodel International, Tropic Beauty and Miss Bikini Universe. The number is the outlet's figure and these pageants vary enormously in size and recognition, so it should be read as a count of appearances rather than as a ranking.[1]
What the pageants gave her was the thing that a small film industry cannot: travel, photographs and a reason to be in cities where producers were casting foreign faces. Indian films of that period regularly needed a European woman for a song sequence or a supporting part, and a model with a portfolio and no attachments could take the work.[1]
The move was not a single decision. Her first Hindi film credit is 2013, the year she turns twenty three, and the Indian work continues intermittently for the next decade alongside her Polish television career. That pattern, rather than a clean relocation to Mumbai, is what her career actually looks like in the record.[2][1]
The Hindi films: Dreamz, Flame and Chicken Curry Law
Her first Indian credit is Dreamz, released in 2013, in which she plays a character named Aafreen. It was followed in 2014 by Flame: An Untold Love Story, where she plays Elena. Both were small productions, and neither is the kind of film that a general audience would have seen.[2]
The credit that matters is Chicken Curry Law, released in 2019, in which she plays Maya Johnson. The film is a courtroom drama about a foreign woman navigating the Indian legal system, and the part put her at the centre of a Hindi film for the first time rather than at the edge of one. It is also the credit that Indian coverage of her uses first.[2][3]
The 2016 documentary The Green Fairy, in which she plays Henriette Henriod, sits between those two groups. It is a European production about absinthe and the artists around it, and it is the clearest example of the second half of her working life: small European films and documentaries that have nothing to do with India and rarely travel outside the festival circuit.[2]
Taken together the filmography is that of a working actress rather than a star. The parts are supporting, the productions are modest, and the value of the list is that it is real. Bharat Fast describes a broader international career than the Polish record supports, and the difference is worth keeping in view.[2][1]
365 Days, Netflix and the European credits
In 2020 she appears as Karolina in 365 Days, the Polish erotic drama that became one of Netflix's most watched non English films. The part is small, but the film is not, and it is the only credit in her record that a global streaming audience might have encountered without looking for her.[2]
Bharat Fast also lists The Swing of Things, the 2020 American comedy with Luke Wilson, among her international projects. The Polish filmography does not include it, and no cast list that this entry could check places her in it. It is treated here as unconfirmed rather than as a credit.[1][2]
The Netflix association is the reason her name travels. A supporting role in a film watched by tens of millions is worth more in recognition than a lead in a film watched by a few thousand, and it is the credit that explains how a Polish model with a handful of Hindi films ended up on the shortlist for an Indian reality show.[2]
She has also worked as a singer, with a debut performance at the TVP New Year concert in Zakopane on 31 December 2018. That is a variety show appearance rather than a recording career, and it belongs with the pageant and television work rather than with the films.[2]
Za kulisami Bollywood and the book
In 2016 the publisher Helion brought out her book Za kulisami Bollywood, which translates as Behind the Scenes of Bollywood. It is a first person account of working in the Indian film industry as a foreign actress, and it covers the auditions, the cultural distance and the practical difficulties of a career spent between two countries.[2]
The book is the most substantial thing she has produced about India, and it is the reason her Indian work has a narrative attached to it rather than a list of credits. Very few foreign performers in Hindi cinema have written one, and the decision to publish in Polish for a Polish readership rather than in English for an international one says something about which audience she was addressing.[1][2]
It also set up the argument that came later. A book that presents a career as more significant than the filmography suggests invites the question of how significant it actually was, and in 2023 that question was asked in public and at length.[2]
Polish television: dance, impersonation and survival
Her Polish television career is where the audience actually is. In the autumn of 2022 she competed in the thirteenth season of Dancing with the Stars. Taniec z gwiazdami on Polsat, partnered with Rafał Maserak. The Polish franchise of the Strictly format is one of the biggest shows in the country, and a season on it reaches more viewers than any of her films.[2]
In the spring of 2023 she reached the final of the eighteenth season of Twoja twarz brzmi znajomo, the Polsat version of Your Face Sounds Familiar, in which celebrities perform as famous singers. Reaching a final in an impersonation format is a specific skill: it requires singing, staging and a willingness to be judged on the imitation rather than on the voice.[2]
In the autumn of the same year she took part in Królowa przetrwania on TVN 7, a survival reality format. That is the closest Polish equivalent to the work she would do in India two years later, and it is the part of her record that makes her Bigg Boss casting look like a continuation rather than a leap.[2]
The sequence matters because it dates her. By the time she entered the Indian house she had spent three consecutive seasons on Polish celebrity television, which is a schedule that produces visibility and also fatigue. The move to Bigg Boss was, in career terms, an export of a format she already knew.[2]
The 2023 dispute about her career
In May 2023 the sports journalist and YouTuber Krzysztof Stanowski published a critical video about Janoszek on Kanał Sportowy. His argument was that she had become famous in Poland largely through reporters who repeated her own claims about an international career, and he suggested that her Indian achievements had been exaggerated or invented.[2]
She responded in June 2023 by announcing a defamation suit. The Warsaw District Court granted an interim injunction that month which barred Kanał Sportowy and Stanowski from publishing claims that she had fabricated her career and was deceiving her audience.[2]
Stanowski published a nearly three hour report about her on 28 July 2023 anyway, restating the allegations and presenting material gathered during what he described as a journalistic investigation. Several Polish entertainment figures, including the designer Ewa Minge and the television executive Edward Miszczak, publicly supported Janoszek.[2]
In November 2024 the Warsaw Court of Appeal ruled that the injunction had been issued without basis. Stanowski described the outcome as a pyrrhic victory, because he had already paid about 20,000 złoty for breaching an order that the appeal court later found should not have been made.[2]
The dispute is part of her public record and it shapes how her Indian work is read. The films and the book exist, and the Polish encyclopaedia lists them. What was contested was the scale of the career built on top of them, and that contest has not been resolved by a final judgment on the merits.[2]
Bigg Boss 19: the Videshi Gori
Bigg Boss 19 premiered on 24 August 2025 on Colors TV and JioHotstar with Salman Khan as host, and Janoszek was one of sixteen housemates introduced that night. She was a day zero entrant rather than a wildcard, which meant she was in the house from the first nomination and the first captaincy task.[3]
The show's presentation of her was built on a contrast. A teaser released on the premiere day showed Neelam Giri dancing to Patli Kamar and Janoszek dancing to Besharam Rang, with the caption that named them the Desi Chhori and the Videshi Gori. She entered to Besharam Rang, and the framing followed her into the house.[3][1]
Her season was short. She was nominated on day 2 in the first round of assembly room nominations, along with Abhishek Bajaj, Gaurav Khanna, Neelam Giri, Pranit More, Tanya Mittal and Zeishan Qadri. She survived that week, was eliminated from captaincy contention in the Merry-Go-Round task, and was then nominated again in the day 16 pairing task with Mridul Tiwari, where the pair missed the nineteen minute target by nearly five minutes.[3]
On day 21 she was evicted along with Nagma Mirajkar, in the first double eviction of the season. ABP Live reported that the two were sent out in the same episode, that the twist caught fans off guard, and that Janoszek had struggled with the language barrier during her three weeks in the house. She had not been captain at any point.[3][4]
The exit was covered in India mostly as a format event rather than as a career one. A foreign contestant who does not speak Hindi fluently is structurally disadvantaged in a house built on argument, and her run ended before the audience had time to decide what to make of her. Bharat Fast, writing in September 2025, treated the entry itself as the moment she reached an Indian television audience rather than as a three week stay.[4][1]
What has not been confirmed
Her height and weight are not published by her. Profile sites print about 5 feet 7 inches and 55 kg, and the same sites print eye and hair colour, but none of it is sourced to an interview. The numbers are consistent across aggregators because they copy each other.[1]
Her income is not disclosed. Bharat Fast estimates a net worth of 2 to 3 million US dollars for 2025 and lists film work, modelling, endorsements, television and book royalties as the sources. That is an estimate by the outlet and not a figure from her or from any filing. No fee for Bigg Boss 19 has been confirmed.[1]
Her filmography is larger in Indian profiles than in the Polish record. The Swing of Things is listed by Bharat Fast but does not appear in the Polish filmography, and an appearance in Housefull 5 is mentioned in Bigg Boss coverage without a named role. Neither is treated here as a confirmed credit.[1][3]
The award naming is also uncertain. Polish Wikipedia records a best international actress award at the JIFFA festival in 2018 and an International Multitalented Actress Award there in 2019, and describes the festival as newly created. Bharat Fast expands the acronym to the Jaipur International Film Festival. The award exists in the Polish record; the expansion of the name is the outlet's.[2][1]
Her relationship status is not confirmed. The profile sites describe her as unmarried and say she keeps her personal life private, and there is no verified partner in the record. Media speculation linking her to co-stars is exactly that.[1]
The exact calendar date of her eviction is not published in a form that can be quoted. The season table records day 21, and the Indian coverage is dated to the middle of September 2025, so the date is derived from the day count rather than announced directly.[3][4]
Questions about this entry
Who is Natalia Janoszek?
Natalia Janoszek is a Polish performer who built an unusual career by moving between Warsaw and Mumbai.
What is Natalia Janoszek known for?
Natalia Janoszek is a Polish performer who built an unusual career by moving between Warsaw and Mumbai.
When was Natalia Janoszek born?
Natalia Janoszek was born in 15 June 1990.
How current is this entry?
It was last updated on 7 November 2026, carries 1 revisions and cites 4 sources. The entry has been checked by the editorial team and carries the verified badge.