An outstanding career
Lakshmi was fifteen when she started acting in films. Her first film was Jeevanamsam, a Tamil film released in 1968. The same year she entered Telugu cinema through Bandhavyalu.
But she became well-known all over India through the film Julie (1975) in which she played the title role. Her performance in the film, made by Vijaya Films B Nagi Reddy, earned her a Filmfare Best Actress Award.
Fluent in all four South India languages, Lakshmi became a popular actress in the 1970s acting in all four South Indian languages: Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. Her Malayalam film Chattakari (1974) was remade in Hindi as Julie (1975) and in Telugu as Miss Julie Prema Katha (1975).
But she did not continue her career in Hindi. In an interview, Lakshmi reminisced, “In retrospective I should have taken it up. But there were already enough good heroines in Bollywood and I did not want to fight for roles. Besides I was quite comfortable at home and with all four languages in the south”. More
