You’ve been recognised by millions through advertisements long before many people knew your name. How did your first breakthrough come about and how did that visibility shape your relationship with your identity as an actor?
My breakthrough as a model in an advertisement came through the TV commercial for the national soap brand Hamam and this came up after long rounds of auditions. They wanted a particular persona for the mother and after they signed me up and the commercial was out, not only did the sales shoot up, but there was a lot of a lot of buzz around the ad. It became a benchmark of sorts as it became a woman empowering brand and then the brand started signing me up every two years. I’m very lucky and blessed to be the face of Hamam for the last ten years now. I’ve had people come up to me and say – Neenga enga veetu ponnu maadiri (you are like one of our daughters in our house).

I’m primarily an actor, but had to take a long break after I gave birth to my son. But I came back with a bang with Hamam, but by that time in those 20 years, a lot of things had changed in the industry. It was a whole new generation of directors, technicians, actors and a fresh crop of story-telling and sensibilities. Although the soap ad had given me tremendous reach into everyone’s homes, I had to do something to grow bigger. I’m happy that I’m now working on a few amazing projects which are all almost completed and should see the light of day in 2026.

You’ve been moving between modelling, theatre, voice work, and screen acting right? What did each medium teach you and any of your top works you can recall from each of them?
I have done a lot of English theatre and vernacular theatre. I still do voice work and acting I did a lot of acting then for TV and now for films, so every medium teaches a lot, they all supplement each other or rather complement each other and every medium’s experience is very valuable.

If I have to give you an example, when I lent my voice for actress Laila in the web series Vadhandhi on Amazon Prime, the director wanted a little more mature and a deeper voice. The character that Laila was playing was that of an Anglo-Indian lady who also speaks Tamil so he wanted that lilt, so I listened to a lot of her personal interviews where I could hear her own voice and that is where I started working from. I did not take her dubbed voice which we all know but I listened to her interviews very intently and worked up from there. That proved that I could sound different if I chose to and work on my vocal cords. My singing training definitely helps. In fact, a lot of people thought that she dubbed for herself in the project so that’s something I am very proud of. I have also dubbed for Lara Dutta in the Tamil film David directed by Bejoy Nambiar and then for the bank manager’s character in Thani Oruvan with Jayam Ravi. I dub all my own work also.

Many actors chase constant visibility, but your career seems guided more by intention than volume. How do you choose your roles?
Yes, most performers do chase constant visibility and now we have Instagram to add to that chaos. I have led my career quite carefully with a lot of intention than mere volume or celebrity status. When I choose roles, I work backwards from the technicians. I believe in completely surrendering to the creator. I need to trust in their calibre as a creator, trust in their discretion, in terms of their story telling, their voice, the way they would choose to portray me in in their project. The other thing is that I don’t want to be typecast and be repetitive. I would like to truly expand my repertoire as an actor. Nasiruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil or Daniel Day-Lewis from Hollywood are the actors that I really look up to and that is the kind of actor I want to be.

Being remembered as a familiar face in everyday households is a unique kind of success. Did you ever feel underestimated because your work felt too familiar rather than glamorous? You’ve often portrayed grounded, relatable women. How do you bring depth to characters that might appear ordinary on paper?
Even when I go shopping or when I’m on the road, I do get recognised with a lot of fondness and respect. If glamour was what I was chasing then even my life choices would have been very different. In that case, I wouldn’t have got married or would have had my son much later, so going down the glamour path was definitely never my intention. But as an actor if a role demands the character to be glamorous then that’s a different deal altogether. If I have to be glamorous just to titillate the audience or just for the sake of being glamorous, then that is definitely not my cup of tea.

I believe in realistic portrayal of characters. I didn’t go down that very predictable path even in the early 2000’s, when I was younger and fresh from the Miss India Pageant. I do like realistic portrayals, very candid characterisations, candid portrayals and I like them to be relatable, so that people can resonate with them at some level.

As someone who has worked across languages and formats, what do you think truly connects an audience to a performance beyond language or scale and what are the languages that you’re most comfortable with?
What connects an audience to a performance is the human emotion. The fact that now with the OTT platforms we all have access to all languages. Human emotions transcend everything. They will break all barriers. If the emotion is true, it will cut across everything else, it doesn’t even matter. The languages that I’m comfortable in are Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam, which is my mother tongue. English, of course and I have also learnt some basic Spanish and some very basic Italian.

Storytelling for children and creative education are areas you’re involved in. Tell us briefly about that side of your life and your other hobbies and passions?
I was involved in a lot of storytelling in theatre for children when I did some work for British Council. I did that when my son was still in school as it aligned with his age. Now that I’ve got back to acting, I don’t have the bandwidth to really do this but I do conduct some very ad hoc impromptu sessions for the children in my building sometimes. I also conducted a workshop for the Theosophical Society in Besant Nagar recently. I believe in agility and engage in activities like swimming, cycling, yoga and HIIT. I enjoy learning and have a PG Diploma in Art Therapy. I’m currently pursuing a certification in Sound Healing.

Looking back, what have been some of the biggest highpoints of your journey so far?
In 2000 I was a finalist in the Miss India competition. We had a rocking batch with Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Dia Mirza and Gauri Karnik. There was a lot to learn from that experience because I was just starting off at that point. Before that I was an air hostess with Jet Airways so that was also a great sense of education and awareness, when I was just out there into the real world in the big city of Bombay. My move to Dubai for a year also taught me a lot. Giving birth to my son was also the highest point of my life. Being a mom can be an absolute pinnacle of joy, exhaustion and exhilaration and sometimes can also can take you to an absolute bottom of despair. It can be a very emotional ride. It enriched me as an actor and as a person. More than me teaching my son I think he has taught me a lot.

The industry has changed drastically with digital platforms and web series. What excites you about this shift?
I think this is absolutely fantastic and super exciting, because it has just opened up everything to everyone. I can watch a film from Japan, Turkey, or Korea in India. Similarly, they can also watch our regional films in their country. The overall baseline of quality is increasing, because now we are competing with the world. Everyone in the world is competing with everyone else in the world, so no one can play the lazy game anymore. We can’t take the audience for granted. They are educated and creative. Everyone has to be on top of their game. It also gives so much scope to technicians, creators, writers, actors, dubbing artists, art directors, editors…basically all the verticals that are required to make up a project, a film or a series. There’s also this convenience of watching OTT from anywhere in the world. The fact that all these platforms have ways of tracking the number of views and how successful a film has been is wonderful as well. It’s giving us constant feedback because otherwise we would just have to go with what people say, what distributors say, or the grapevine and there’s always an inkling of doubt there.

Tell us about your current and upcoming projects.
I have three Tamil films that are coming up in 2026. I’m acting in Ameer’s film, Iraivan Miga Periyavan, written by Director Vetrimaaran. Then I have a film titled Malaiyerum Nadhigal produced by Pa Ranjith, directed by Sreenivasan for Neelam Productions, which is again super special for me because I play a very de-glam poor woman in it. I also have a Harish Kalyan film which is releasing early 2026, directed by Vineeth Varaprasad and the title is Dashamakan. I’m currently working on a Hindi spiritual docu drama which is to do with the energy centres in our country. I went to Varanasi recently to shoot for that.

I was also in the Malayalam film titled Theatre: The Myth of Reality with director Sajin Babu, who is a national award winner. Then there was a music video directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon with music by AR Rahman that I did three years ago. In The Good Wife (Tamil) a popular web series, directed by Revathy recently, I played the role of a lawyer, which will be coming up with their Season 2 on Hotstar. This time it will be directed by writer and director miss Halitha Shameem. I’ve heard that she’s a fantastic director to work with, so I’m looking forward to it.