Hema Choudhary

Hema Chowdari
Born	Durga Prabhu 12th October 1955 Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), India
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1976 - present

Hema Chaudhary (born 1955) is an Indian film actress who has predominantly acted in Kannada films in addition to Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil films. Starting her career as a lead actress for the Telugu film Pelli Kani Pelli in 1976, she switched over to character roles in the 1980s. She is best remembered for her villainous roles that she portrayed in Kannada cinema in films like Subhashaya (1977) and Gaali Maathu (1981). Among her Tamil films, the K. Balachander directed Manmatha Leelai (1976) opposite actor Kamal Haasan was most notable. Acting in over 150 films, Hema is considered one of the popular character artistes in South Indian cinema.

Apart from acting, Hema is an accomplished Kuchipudi dancer and has performed for over 700 shows all across the world. She is a recipient of the Panorama award for her dancing skills. She has also been chosen by the National Film Awards committee as the judging panel for three years.

Hema was born to the popular female dubbing artiste of Telugu films, Brundavan Chaudhary, in Andhra Pradesh. She grew up watching the legendary artistes such as NTR, Sivaji Ganesan and MGR performance. She eventually underwent an acting course in the Chennai Film Institute and obtained a degree.

After having completed her acting course, Hema started her career as a lead actress in the 1976 film Pelli Kani Pelli directed by Adhiraj Anand Mohan and opposite actor Sridhar. Soon later she worked in numerous hit Telugu films such as Bangaru Manishi (1977), Nijam (1978), Kotta Alludu (1979) and Premayanam (1987). Meanwhile, she entered Tamil and Malayalam films in the same period. She was one of the main leads in the blockbuster Tamil film, Manmatha Leelai (1976) opposite Kamal Haasan. Her maiden Kannada cinema was Vijaya Vani (1977) in which she played second lead role. However it was her bold portrayal of a grey shade character girl named "Kanaka" in the film Gaali Maathu (1981) that made her a household name. She received unanimous praise for her performance of a hidden blackmailer in the film. From then on, she went on to appear in more than 150 films as a character actress with almost all the big directors and actors in Kannada cinema.

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