Kangana Ranaut has been announced as a recipient of this year’s Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian honour, for her contribution to the field of performing arts. She celebrated the achievement with the team of her upcoming film Thalaivi in Chennai.

A picture shared by the official Instagram handle of Kangana’s team shows her cutting a huge cake, as the cast and crew applauds her. “Team #Thalaivi celebrates #KanganaRanaut’s supreme achievement in being awarded the prestigious #PadmaShri Award,” the caption read.

Soon after being conferred with the Padma Shri, Kangana expressed her gratitude towards the Government of India and well-wishers in a video. Dedicating her win to “every woman who dares to dream”, she said, “I’m humbled and I’m honoured. I am grateful to the Indian government, my fans and friends. I thank my country for this recognition and I dedicate this to every woman who dares to dream. To every daughter... to every mother... and to the dreams of women who will shape the future of our country.”

Other Padma Shri awardees from the film industry include producer Ekta Kapoor, filmmaker Karan Johar and singer Adnan Sami.

Kangana is currently shooting for Thalaivi, which chronicles the journey of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa from “a superstar heroine” to “a revolutionary hero”. The film is being directed by AL Vijay and also features Arvind Swami, Priyamani and Prakash Raj in key roles.

Earlier, Kangana told IANS that she was having a tough time learning Tamil for her role in Thalaivi. She said, “I am finding it difficult to learn Tamil. This film will be released in Hindi and Tamil, so we will do something about it. Obviously, I have to mug up those dialogues because Tamil is not an easy language. Earlier, I was trying to learn the complete Tamil language because I have learned English as well, but now I am learning Tamil as per the demand of film’s script.”

Produced by Vishnu Vardhan Induri and Shailesh R Singh, Thalaivi will release on June 26.