Ramya Krishnan (born 15 September 1970 in Chennai) is an Indian film actress. She has acted in over 200 films in five languages: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. Predominantly, she acted in almost 100 Telugu and 60 Tamil movies.
Ramya was born in Chennai. She is the niece of veteran Tamil comedian Cho Ramaswamy. She received initial training in Bharathanatyam, Western and Kuchipudi dance forms and has given many stage performances. Her mother tongue is Tamil.
Krishnan started her acting career at the age of 13 with the Malayalam film Neram Pularumbol featuring Mammootty and Mohanlal in the lead. This film had a delayed release in 1986. Her first release was Vellai Manasu (1985), a Tamil film opposite Y. G. Mahendra.
Krishnan's first Telugu film was Bhalae Mithrulu. She achieved fame through Kasinadhuni Viswanath’s Sutradharulu, released in 1989. She emerged as leading actresses in the Telugu industry alongside Soundarya, Meena, Roja and Nagma in the 1990s. As her breakthrough came from K.Raghavendra Rao directorial movies where she emerged as a commercial romantical diva of the season, which include movies like Allari Mogudu and Alludugaru paired with Mohan Babu and Allari Priyudu paired with Rajasekhar. She also performed well as a devoted wife of Sri Annamacharya, role performed by Nagarjuna in Annamayya. She has been paired with leading actors such as N. T. Rama Rao, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Krishna, Chiranjeevi, Balakrishna, Nagarjuna, Venkatesh, Jagapathi Babu, Rajendra Prasad, Srikanth, Rajasekhar, Junior NTR, and Mahesh Babu. She received a prestigious Nandi Award from the Government of Andhra Pradesh for her performance in Dasari Narayana Rao's film Kante Koothurne Kanu.