This National Award-winning actor has already won over fans of Malayalam, Telugu, and Tamil films
Keerthy Suresh | 28
Actor
Keerthy Suresh goes on a laughter spree during a phone call from Dubai while narrating how her mother only recently discovered—via interviews—that she would act in front of the mirror as a schoolgirl. “I always wanted to become an actor,” says Keerthy, whose father is a film producer and mother an actor.
“Acting is everything to me at the moment. I am spontaneous and don’t prepare too much. In my subconscious mind I keep working on my character, but there are no extra rehearsals. I like going with the flow,” says the 28-year-old who bagged the National Award for Best Actress for Mahanati (2018). “I didn’t expect that at all. It came as a surprise. Everyone said the performance deserved the award… that was the icing on the cake. There is a different kind of push after winning it. It has added a lot of responsibility. I feel it’s just the beginning.”
Keerthy has earned her stripes in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. And her directors are impressed with her spontaneity. “She’s a director’s actor and an instinctive performer, quite natural. If fit in the right story and character, she is quite something. A lot of stuff that she did in Mahanati was with basic direction. Once that character clicked, the performance was a subconscious thing,” says Ashwin Nag, director of Mahanati, a Telugu biopic of actor Savitri.
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Keerthy is excited about the changing face of cinema and storytelling with the proliferation of OTTs. “There was a time when the audience changed according to cinema… now cinema is changing according to the audience. You need to read people’s minds. There will be a lot more changes,” says Keerthy, who featured in the Amazon Prime film Penguin and Netflix’s Miss India in 2020.
(This story appears in the 12 February, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)