Lesser known facts about noted actress Sridevi

Mumbai: One of Indian cinema’s most talented actors – Sridevi – breathed her last in Dubai on February 24 after a massive cardiac arrest. She was there to attend a family wedding. News of her untimely demise has come across as a rude shock.

As an artiste Sridevi ruled the roost in the 1980s and early 1990s. She was also called India’s first female superstar.

Here’s taking a look at some of the lesser-known facts about the late actress:

·        Sridevi was born as Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan. Her father Ayyapan hailed from Tamil Nadu while her mother belonged to Andhra Pradesh.

·        Sridevi made her first appearance as a child artiste at the age of 4 in Thunaivan in 1969.

·        Besides Hindi and Tamil, Sridevi has acted in Telugu, Malayam and Kannada films.

·        Her first film as the lead actress was Moondru Mudichu starring Rajinikanth as villain in 1976.

·        Julie released in 1975 was her first Hindi film. But she played actress Lakshmi’s younger sister in the film.

·        Solva Sawan, a remake of Tamil film 16 Vythinile marked her Hindi debut as the lead actress.

·        Sridevi has worked with Jeetendra in as many as 16 films and most of them were super-hits.

·        Steven Speilberg had reportedly offered a role to Sridevi in Jurassic Park in 1993 but she declined it to focus on films in Bollywood.

·        Sridevi was reportedly the first choice to play the female role in Abbas- Mustan’s Baazigar starring Shah Rukh Khan. The female leads - subsequently played by Kajol and Shilpa Shetty – both were initially meant to be played by Sridevi as characters were meant to be twin sisters.

·        She was also reportedly the first choice to play the female lead in Indra Kumar’s Beta starring Anil Kapoor. But she chose not to do the film because she had worked with Anil in a number of films earlier.

·        Prior to Yash Chopra’s Chandni, Sridevi’s voice was dubbed by other artistes because she was not familiar with Hindi language. It was Chandni that she started dubbing for herself.

·        Sridevi took a break from films in 1997 to focus on her family.

·        She made a comeback with Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish in 2012. In 2017, she played the title role in Mom, a critically acclaimed film also starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Akshaye Khanna.

·        She had shot for a cameo in Shah Rukh Khan starrer Zero (which is slated to release in December this year) in October last year.