Rambha (actress)

Rambha was born as Vijayalakshmi in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh on 5 June 1976 into a Telugu-speaking family. She did her schooling at Atkinsons Senior Secondary School, Vijayawada. While she was studying in her 7th standard, she acted as Ammavaru (Mother Goddess) for her school's Annual Day competition.[4] The event had been attended by director Hariharan who stayed in contact and later introduced her as the female lead in Malayalam film, Sargam.[4] Her first on-screen name was Amrutha, which she later changed as Rambha after the character name in her Telugu debut movie Aa Okkati Adakku.

Rambha gave up her education aged 15 and then started her career with Hariharan's Malayalam film Sargam (1992) opposite Vineeth. The film perform well at the box office, though she was spotted by director E. V. V. Satyanarayana who then cast her in the Telugu film Aa Okkati Adakku (1992), where she was paired opposite Rajendra Prasad.[5] The film performed well and prompted several film offers for the actress from several different film industries across India. During the height of her career in the late 1990s, Rambha deliberately continued to pick glamorous roles to garner film offers. In successful films such as Hitler (1997) starring Chiranjeevi, Rambha appeared in roles which were inconsequential to the plot and purely depicted as the lead actor's love interest.[5]

She started her career as a producer with help of her brother in Three Roses (2003), in which Jyothika, Laila and Rambha played the lead characters. However, the film failed at the box office and she fell heavily into debt after the film's release.[6] She sold her house at Mount Road, Chennai in order to pay the debt, while she was also booked in a cheque-bounce case filed by the financiers of the movie.[7]

Rambha has acted in several languages and always maintained a successful balance in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bhojpuri and Bengali. Her last film in Malayalam titled Payum Puli in 2007 got good reviews and despite being in her mid 30s, she did one of her most glamorous roles for this film. Most of her movies are successful. In 2010, Rambha shot alongside Prakash Raj for a thriller film titled Vidiyum Varai Kathiru. The film was shot in three languages namely Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, but the film did not have a theatrical release.[8]

After her marriage she had given up films and has judged a very popular Tamil TV show Maanada Mayilada, and the Telugu dance show Dhee.[2] After a long gap she came back from Toronto, she appeared as a judge of Zee Telugu dance show ABCD-Anybody Can Dance and judged Kings of Comedy Juniors on Vijay TV.

She is a brand ambassador for Kolors health care, Chennai[9] and also for her husband's firm based in Toronto.

Rambha married Indrakumar Pathmanathan, a Canada based businessman, on 8 April 2010 at Karnataka Kalyana Mandapam in Tirumala.[10] They settled in Toronto. They have two daughters and a son.[11][12][13]

In order of languages in which she acted the most to least number

• Rambha at IMDb
• Rambha at Bollywood Hungama
• Rambha on Instagram