Kalyani Priyadarshan

Kalyani Priyadarshan Biography

Kalyani Priyadarshan is a budding film actress of south Indian cinema. She is the daughter of veteran filmmaker Priyadarshan, and his former wife, Lissy, a well-known and successful actress of Malayalam cinema in the 1980s. She made her acting debut in the 2017 Telugu film Hello, and has worked as art director and production designer in the film industry before marking her acting debut. She won Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut – South for her first film, Hello, where she played female lead opposite Akhil Akkineni. The film opened to positive reviews from critics and audiences, and its dubbed Hindi version too received the same response. Currently she is working on Telugu project, Sharwa 27.

Kalyani was born to famous filmmaker Priyadarshan and Malayalam actress Lissy in Chennai. She has one younger brother Sidharth. Her parents are separated now. She did her schooling from Lady Andal, Chennai and then Singapore. After schooling she worked with many theatre groups while at Singapore before moving back to India. She also took graduation in architecture designing from Parsons School of Design, New York.

After moving back to India, she got involved with theatre and acting workshops and also worked as art director and production designer in the film industry. Her film career began in 2013, when she worked as an assistant production designer under Sabu Cyril in the Bollywood film Krrish 3. In 2016 she worked as an assistant art director for Vikram starrer Iru Murugan. In 2017 she marked her acting debut with Vikram Kumar’s Telugu hit film, Hello. She made a promising debut playing the lead role and also bagged Filmfare best female debut award. Her next movie, Sharwa 27 is slated to release in 2019.

Published: October 28, 2018

Updated: October 28, 2018