This Comedian’s Teenage YouTube Videos Helped Make His Mom A Bollywood Star

Sure, this is a story of the wildness of YouTube videos and the daring role that Mawaan Rizwan’s mother, Shahnaz Rizwan, took on – but more than that, it’s a tale of Shahnaz’s life coming full circle. “At age 3 she made her film debut. Over the next decade, she told me, she went on to star in more than 30 black-and-white Pakistani films. By 12, she was supporting her family with her earnings. She was basically the Macaulay Culkin of Karachi. But when she was a teenager, she had to stop acting. People told her it was no profession for a young woman and that only prostitutes worked as actresses.”