Senior Malayalam actor and dubbing artiste Lakshmi Krishnamoorthy passed away in Chennai on Saturday. According to Manorama Online, she was 90 years old.
Known for her wise-elderly-woman roles, Lakshmi appeared in a few movies, mostly in the 1990s. Her notable performances are in Ee Puzhayum Kadannu as the grandmother of three young women living in a house by themselves, in Udyanapalakan, as Mammootty’s television watching mother, and much earlier in the award-winning movie Panchagni as a freedom fighter.
Lakshmi, a native of Kozhikode, began her career as an artiste and announcer with Akashvani, All India Radio. She became the first Malayalam newsreader. Even before that, she used to act in plays, Lakshmi had said in an interview with Indira Balan of Saarthakam. Her first drama was a play by Thikkodiyan.
Many in her family used to be in theatre, Lakshmi had said. And learning classical dances was also a norm in the family. Dancers like Maya Rao and Meenakshi Sreenivasan are in the family.
She was working in the radio when she got married to Krishnamoorthy, a native of Mysuru and official of the Hyderabad Administrative Staff College. He was very supportive of all her artistic ventures, Lakshmi had said.
She became a dubbing artiste around the same time. She found dubbing more difficult than acting, Lakshmi had added.
It is years later than she began acting in films, Panchagni being her first. Piravi, by Shaji N Karun, was next. She was later in seen in movies like Thoovalkottaram, Kaliyoon
Along with films, she also acted in serials, most of them penned by MT Vasudevan Nair. Her sister Nirmala Sreenivasan also acted in MT Vasudevan Nair’s film Oru Cheru Punchiri.