Iconic Actress: Jaya Prada

Actress turned politician, Jaya Prada was born in Rajamundry, Andhra Pradesh. Before she was introduced to Bollywood by K. Vishwanath, director, she took spoken Hindi classes to gain fluency in the language. Apart from Hindi, she has starred in Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu movies.

Her venture into acting started after she performed a dance in her school’s annual day. She was just fourteen years old by then. A director who was there as an audience offered her a dance number in “Bhoomi Kosam”, a Telugu movie. Despite of her hesitation, her family encouraged her to go for it. She was paid Rs 10 for her work at that point of time. But there was no looking back after that. The offers for getting her starred in the movie started pouring for this teenager that time. Born on 3rd April, 1962, Jaya Prada turned out to be a successful actress with two huge hit films in 1976. “Anthuleni Katha” (1976) directed by K Balachander presented her dramatic skills. In 1976, her dancing skills in the role is “Sita” were prominent in a big budget movie, Seetha Kalyanam.

In 1977, Jaya starred in “Adavi Ramudu”, which was a super hit in the box office and cemented her star status as lead actress. The song "Aaresukoboyi Paresukunnanu" performed by Prada and her co-star N.T. Rama Rao became a huge hit. Filmmaker Vijay introduced her to Kannada cinema in 1977 through his movie Sanadi Appanna along with Raj Kumar.

In Bollywood, some of her unforgettable films are “Kamchor”; Prakash Mehra’s “Sharabi”, and K.Vishwanath’s Sanjog. Her milestone mobie is “Saagara Sangaman”, with veteran actor as her co-star i.e. Kamal Hassan. Jaya won Filmfare award for the Best Actress-Telgu, for this movie.