Lakshmi

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Lakshmi was born in Tamil Nadu in the city of Chennai.  Her real name is Yaragudipati Venkatalakshmi.

Her mother was also an actress by the name of Kumari Rukmini who acted in only Tamil films.  

She was married to Bhaskar in 1969 who worked with the Insurance Agency and they have a daughter Aishwarya by this marriage. In 1974 the couple divorced.  She fell in love with co-star Mohan Sharma during their film Chattakari which also ended in divorce.

Lakshmi remarried for the third time to her co-star and director M. Sivachandran in 1987. They adopted a girl named Samyuktha in the year 2000.

Lakshmi made her debut in the Tamil film Sri Valli and did many films between 1968 to 1980 and was considered as one of the most successful South Heroines.  Most of her films were blockbusters.

She appeared in films in various languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and has won one National Film Award for the Best Actress. She won nine Filmfare awards in South, Three Nandi Film Awards, Best Actress from Kerala State Film Awards, Karnataka State Awards. An award from Bengal Film Journalists Association Awards and many other various states.

She made her debut in Bollywood in 1975 in the Woman centric film Julie, which was a remake of the Malayalam film Chattakkari. The film was a super hit and her role was widely appreciated by the film circle, her audience, fans and the media.  From then on she switched over to character roles and established herself as one of the finest actresses.

For her film in Julie was given an award for being an actress with the most outstanding performance.

Julie or Lakshmi as she is also nick named acted with almost all the South actors and she became popular co-star with Anant Nag in the 70’s and 80’s.Anant Nag and Lakshmi had a great chemistry onscreen and went on to become a favourite pairs in the South Indian cinema.  They acted in over 25 films together.

After the success of Julie, the Bollywood film, she only did supporting actress role in Hindi films like Aishwarya Rai’s grandmother in the film Jeans in 1998, and Kareena Kapoor’s grandmother in Hulchul in 2004. She has acted in over 400 films over her career span in the film industry and is also involved in politics alongside.

Lakshmi also made her directorial debut in  the remake of the English film Yours Mine and Ours which under the supervision of K. Balachander.