Sridevi Kapoor
Actress BORN AUGUST 13, 1963 DIED FEBRUARY 24, 2018, AGED 54
ARGUABLY Bollywood’s first female superstar, actress Sridevi was one of the few women in Indian cinema to headline box-office hits with no man beside her in a leading role.
Born as Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, she started acting at the age of four, appearing in several Tamil films in the 1960s and 1970s, and eventually dropping out of school for a career in the movies.
Yet she was acutely aware that her childhood was far from ordinary. “I lost out on going to school and college life but I got into the film industry and worked without a gap – from child actor I went straight to heroine.
“There was no time to think and I was grateful for it,” she said. “In order to get something you have to lose something. You can’t have everything in life. So I am happy with what I got.”
She went on to act in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu films, performing alongside leading men such as Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth. Through the 1980s and 1990s she charmed audiences in female-centric films such as Chandni (Moonlight) and Lamhe (Moments), drawing praise for her comic timing in Chaalbaaz (Trickster) and Shekhar Kapur’s Mr India, playing feisty characters in marked contrast to the traditionally coy Bollywood heroine.
In 2013 Sridevi was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours, for her decades of service to the film industry.
Her last and 300th screen appearance was in the critically-acclaimed 2017 film Mom, where she played a mother avenging her daughter’s rape.
The mother-of-two had been in Dubai attending a family wedding when she accidentally drowned in her hotel bathtub.
Sridevi is survived by her husband, film producer Boney Kapoor, and daughters Jhanvi and Khushi.