Celina Jiya Jaitley was born in Kabul, Afghanistan on 24th November 1981, to a Punjabi father, Col. V.K. Jaitley, an Indian Army Officer, and Afghani Hindu mother Meeta , who was a nurse in the Indian Army. Her twin brother, Vikrant is also in the Indian army. She is 5'6" tall and fair with light green eyes. Her pet names are Chinto and Chinki. She can fluently speak English, Punjabi, German, Urdu and Bengali.

As her father had a transferable job, Celina attended various schools in different locations of India. She desired to become a pilot or a doctor but graduated in Commerce from Indira Gandhi National Open University.

She worked in a cell-phone company in Kolkata. In 2001, she bagged the 'Miss India' title and was the 4th runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant, 2001.

She entered Bollywood as a model and made her debut in films through 'JANASHEEN' (2003) opposite Fardeen Khan. She has acted in eleven other movies. She acted in 'KHEL' opposite Sunny Deol and Sunit Shetty, and in 'SILSILAY' with Shahrukh Khan and Tabu, in a supporting role; both movies were a flop.

Some other movies where she played supporting roles are comedy movies 'NO ENTRY' with Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor and Lara Dutta (a big hit), 'TOM DICK and HARRY', 'APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY' and 'HELLO DARLING' where she got a leading role opposite Gul Panang and Javed Jaffrey. She has yet to win a Bollywood award. In her teens, she had a relationship with Sean who was a gay. She recently had a relationship with Peter Haag, a Dubai based Austrian hotelier and is now engaged to him.