Sandhya Rani

Sandhya Rani incidentally is a very common screen name for actresses in various languages, the oldest being Sandhya Rani of the Bengali screen, who started her film career in 1938, and passed away in 1999 after having acted in over 60 films. The latest actress with that name is actually Revathi (her real name), an actress from the South, who has acted in all the major languages of the region. Born to Malayali parents in Chennai, she started her acting career in 2004 at the age of 16, with a role in the Tamil movie “Kaadhal” which immediately brought her laurels, fetching her both the Filmfare award as well as the State Film Award in the same year. In fact, this prompted her fans to refer to her as Kaadhal Sandhya.

In certain ways, Sandhya’s entry into movies was a happy coincidence for her. For her first film for which she ultimately received so much acclaim, the role was to be originally played by Gopika, who was then a very busy actress, and Sandhya got the break as the producer could not get the dates from Gopika. Sandhya Rani never looked back after that. In fact after the tremendous success of her next Tamil film “Dishyum”, she could not leave films and had to drop out of her studies as a result. In between she also acted in one Malayalam film titled “Alice in Wonderland”, to broad base her acting career. There have been several notable features of the rather pious looking Sandhya Rani, in the more than 35 films in which she has acted so far.

The Kannada film “Aptharakshaka” went on to be a mega hit, running for a continuous span of 35 weeks. She had taken lessons in dancing and vocal music in her childhood, and this stood her in good stead when she got the chance to do playback singing in her own Tamil movie, “Manjal Veiyil”. On the other hand, there have been several dance performances given by her on stage which has been widely appreciated by connoisseurs. Although her early films were mostly in Tamil, her recent ones, including those under production have been predominantly in her own native tongue, Malayali.

Outside movies, her TV presence has, however, been mostly in reality shows, and she has not yet taken the soap route.