![J Jayalalithaa, actress of the yesteryears | Express photo]](http://media.assettype.com/TNIE%2Fimport%2F2016%2F12%2F5%2Foriginal%2FJayalalithaa3.jpg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
HYDERABAD: With over 50 films in the Telugu film industry, including a number of hits with the industry’s legends like N T Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Jayalalithaa is fondly remembered both in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Her mother Sandhya had acted in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. She encouraged Jayalalithaa to join the film industry at a very young age. So she started working in films as a child artiste.
Journalists and film critics, who have observed her career as an actress in Tollywood, remember her as fiercely independent, extremely dynamic and humble.
“She started as a child actress in Telugu films as well... In the 1960s and 1970s, she was an established actress working with the likes of NTR and ANR,” said senior journalist Mohan Divakar.
In her illustrious career, Jayalalithaa delivered 28 hits in Telugu alone. She acted in 12 films with NTR and seven with ANR. Incidentally, her first and last film was with ANR.
“She had a huge following in Telugu and was immensely popular, especially after she acted in Brahmachari (1968) opposite ANR. In half the film, she wore a male costume.
“She not only excelled in social dramas, she also acted in mythological films. Her diction was perfect to the core in Telugu,” Divakar said.
“She spoke with so much clarity and never had the Tamil accent when she spoke in Telugu,” Divakar added.
That is one of the reasons why she was so hugely popular in Telugu — she dubbed her own voice and spoke with supreme clarity. Her much famed chemistry with Sobhan Babu was one of the most widely discussed topics in the film industry.
Jayalalithaa did only one film with Sobhan Babu, Gudachari 116 (1967), but their chemistry was incredible. She became a household name in Andhra Pradesh, especially since she had done films with legends like NTR and ANR.
Another interesting point is that NTR was paired opposite Jayalalithaa’s mother Sandhya in Maya Bazaar.
Some 14 years later, he acted opposite Jayalalithaa in Sri Krishna Satya.
“She had no qualms about that and her character won a lot of applause,” explained Rentala Jayadeva, Nandi award-winning film critic.
Apart from her acting skills, Jayalalithaa was also known for her magnanimous personality, even when she was an actress, much before she turned to politics.
“She was a reluctant actress and had admitted that she was pushed into it by her mother. She kept to herself and not many people knew her well.
“But she always went out of her way to help out her colleagues and contemporaries in the field of acting. She was especially nice and helpful to the people who had worked with her mother,” Jayadeva added.
In her career, Jayalalithaa acted in 125 films and 119 of them were declared hits. She won the Filmfare award in Telugu as an actress for Sri Krishna Satya, directed by K V Reddy, his last movie.