Sai Pallavi

Sai Pallavi
Sai Pallavi in 2017
Born	Sai Pallavi Senthamarai (1992-05-09) 9 May 1992 Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	Tbilisi State Medical University, Georgia (MBBS)
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2015–present
Family	Pooja Kannan (sister)

Sai Pallavi Senthamarai Kannan (born 9 May 1992) is an Indian actress and dancer who works primarily in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. Regarded as one of the most accomplished actresses in South Indian cinema, she is the recipient of numerous accolades including four Filmfare Awards South and two South Indian International Movie Awards. She was featured by Forbes magazine as one of India's 30 under 30 in 2020.

Pallavi made her acting debut with 2015 Malayalam film Premam, which was the second highest-grossing Malayalam film till then, for which she received critical praise. She has since established herself in Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam cinema with acclaimed performances in films like Kali (2016), Fidaa (2017), Middle Class Abbayi (2017), Maari 2 (2018), Athiran (2019), Paava Kadhaigal (2020), Love Story (2021), Shyam Singha Roy (2021) and Gargi (2022).

Early life

Sai Pallavi was born on 9 May 1992 in a Badaga family in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Her hometown is Kotagiri in the Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu. Born to Senthamarai Kannan and Radha, She has a younger sister, Pooja, who has also worked as an actress. She was raised and educated in Coimbatore, doing her schooling at Avila Convent School.

Despite completing her medical studies in 2016 from the Tbilisi State Medical University which is recognised by Medical Council of India, she has not yet registered as a medical practitioner in India. She took her Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) on 31 August 2020 in Trichy. Besides Badaga, Pallavi can speak fluently in Tamil, English, Hindi and Georgian. She later learnt Telugu following a career in her respective cinema industry.

Pallavi said in an interview that though she was not a trained dancer, but she always wanted to do something that involved dancing. She participated in several cultural events at school, gaining popularity as a dancer. Due to her passion for dance, which was supported by her mother, she participated in the dance reality show Ungalil Yaar Adutha Prabhu Deva on Vijay TV in 2008, and was a finalist in Dhee Ultimate Dance Show (D4) on ETV in 2009.

Pallavi appeared in uncredited roles as a child actress in Kasthuri Maan (2005) and Dhaam Dhoom (2008) and appeared in few advertisements.

Film career

Breakthrough (2015–2016)

In 2014, while she was studying in Tbilisi, Georgia, film-director Alphonse Puthren had approached her six years before, through clippings from a reality show which she had participated, showcased in Facebook. Alphonse initially gave her an offer to act in his film which she refused, and after six years, he phoned to Pallavi, in which she thought him as a stalker and wanted to lodge a police complaint on him. But later misunderstood after Alphonse forcibly introduced himself. Then, She accepted the role of Malar in his film Premam. She shot the film over the holidays and, after the shooting finished, returned to her studies. She went on to win several "Best Female Debut" awards that year, including the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut. Years later, in an interview, Alphonse revealed that Asin was initially considered for the character Malar, played by Pallavi, following a fan's request.

In late 2015, Studio Green signed up Pa. Ranjith to direct a film for their production house after they had bought and distributed the director's successful previous venture, Attakathi (2012). He confirmed that he would shortly begin work on a project titled Madras with Karthi in the lead role. For that she was the first and director's strong choice of the female lead but she denied the film offer due to pursue her medical studies in Georgia. Then she took a month break from her studies to act in her second Malayalam film, Kali, which released in March 2016. She portrayed Anjali, a young wife who must deal with her husband's extreme anger issues, earning a nomination for Filmfare Award for Best Actress – Malayalam.

Established actress (2017–present)

The year 2017 marked her debut in Telugu with Sekhar Kammula's Fidaa, in the role of Bhanumathi, a feisty village girl from Telangana. Her performance in the film is regarded as one of the "100 Greatest Performances of the Decade" by Film Companion. She went onto win her first Filmfare Award for Best Actress – Telugu. Her next project with director A. L. Vijay announced that he would be working on a film with her for Lyca Productions and that he would direct a script he had written "three and a half years ago". He had chosen to cast Sai Pallavi, after another project for Pramod Films, which would have been a Tamil remake of the Malayalam film Charlie (2015) with Madhavan, was suddenly shelved. After securing the actress's dates to shoot the film, Vijay finalised the technical crew to include his regular collaborators such as cinematographer Nirav Shah and editor Anthony. For Sai Pallavi, it became her first Tamil language film following a series of projects which she dropped out of, she was replaced in or was shelved. She had previously been cast and then replaced in Mani Ratnam's Kaatru Veliyidai (2017), while she opted out Vijay Chander's Sketch (2017). Likewise, earlier, her films Charlie and Rajiv Menon's Saravam Thaala Maayam were indefinitely postponed. Finally, it was Diya, which is a Tamil–Telugu bilingual film and had an average run at the box office. In May 2018, it was reported that Vijay Deverakonda will join with debutant director Bharat Kamma for a new film. The first look poster of the film was unveiled on Devarakonda's birthday, 9 May 2018, For that she was earlier chosen for the film's female lead. However, she rejected the script due to the lip-lock scenes between the lead actors. Later, she starred in the Tamil movie Maari 2, a sequel to Maari (2015), opposite Dhanush, directed by Balaji Mohan. A song from the movie, "Rowdy Baby", is the most viewed song in YouTube from South India.

Pallavi started shooting in February 2018 for the film Padi Padi Leche Manasu with Sharwanand, which was a huge commercial failure. In December, several news outlets reported that she refused to accept her full remuneration, expressing solidarity with the producers for the failure of the film. In 2019, she portrayed an autistic girl in the psychological thriller Athiran opposite Fahadh Faasil. Her next film in Tamil with actor Suriya, directed by Selvaraghavan titled NGK, released on 31 May 2019. Although the film received mixed reviews from critics, it ended up being a commercial success.

In 2020, she was recognised by Forbes magazine as one of India's 30 under 30. She was the only person from film industry in that list. She also acted in a Netflix anthology film series Paava Kadhaigal segment Oor Iravu directed by Vetrimaaran. In 2021, she starred in the romantic drama Love Story alongside Naga Chaitanya in her second collaboration with Sekhar Kammula after Fidaa (2017) and Shyam Singa Roy opposite Nani in their second collaboration after MCA. In 2022 she appeared in Telugu film Virata Parvam opposite Rana Daggubati. For her Tamil film Gargi, she dubbed her own lines in both Telugu and Kannada. Her next film will be in Tamil along with Sivakarthikeyan produced by Kamal Hassan under Raaj Kamal Films International directed by Rajkumar Periyasamy. And currently she is in talks of Nitesh Tiwari and Ravi Udyawar's direction, Allu Aravind 's Geetha Arts production presents Ramayana to play Goddess Sita, starring Hrithik Roshan and Ranbir Kapoor which eventually make her Hindi cinema debut.

Media image

In 2019, Sai Pallavi Rejected A 2 Crore Fairness Cream Ad Calling Her Skin As 'Indian Colour' & Said “Africans Have Their Own Colour Too And They Are Beautiful”. This created a big impact and went viral.

Pallavi became the only actress to feature in Forbes India's 30 under 30 list of 2020.She stood at the 20th place in its most influential stars on Instagram in South cinema for the year 2021 list.

In June 2022 in an interview with GreatAndhra, she commented that the film The Kashmir Files portrayed the killings of Kashmiri Pandits, during the 1990 exodus, and further asked if that is a religious conflict then what should be the difference between itself and cow vigilantism, referring to a recent incident where a Muslim was driving cows was beaten up and later forced to chant "Jai Shri Ram". The interview soon went viral and attracted criticism online. She later issued a clarification statement on her Instagram handle that her statements in the interview were misunderstood, and that she would neither trivialize a tragedy nor be comfortable with mob lynchings.

Filmography

Films

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

List of films and roles

Year	Title	Role(s)	Language(s)	Notes	Ref.
2005	Kasthuri Maan	College girl	Tamil	Uncredited roles
2008	Dhaam Dhoom	Shenba's relative	Tamil
2015	Premam	Malar	Malayalam	Also choreographer
2016	Kali	Anjali	Malayalam
2017	Fidaa	Bhanumathi	Telugu
	Middle Class Abbayi	Pallavi "Chinni"	Telugu
2018	Diya	Thulasi Krishna	Tamil	Also in Telugu as Kanam
	Padi Padi Leche Manasu	Vaishali Cherukuri	Telugu
	Maari 2	Aanandhi Mariyappan	Tamil
2019	Athiran	Nithya	Malayalam
	NGK	Geetha Kumari	Tamil
2020	Paava Kadhaigal	Sumathi	Tamil	Segment Oor Iravu
2021	Love Story	Mounika Rani	Telugu
	Shyam Singha Roy	Rosie (Maithreyi)	Telugu
2022	Virata Parvam	Vennela	Telugu
	Gargi	Gargi	Tamil
TBA	Untitled film co-starring Sivakarthikeyan	TBA	Tamil	Filming

Television

Awards and nominations

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sai Pallavi.

• Sai Pallavi at IMDb 
• Sai Pallavi on Twitter
• Sai Pallavi on Instagram