Keerthy Suresh

Early life

Keerthy was born to Malayalam film producer, director Suresh Kumar and Malayalam actress Menaka who is from a conservative Tamil family. She has an elder sister, Revathy Suresh, who works as a VFX specialist and had previously worked for Shahrukh Khan's production house Red Chillies. Until class four, Keerthy did her schooling in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She then studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, Thiruvananthapuram before coming back to Chennai to join the Pearl Academy where she completed her degree in fashion design. She also spent time on an exchange program in Scotland for four months, before completing a two-month internship in London. Despite making a career in acting, she has stated that she was also "seriously considering a career in designing"..

Career

In the early 2000s, Keerthy worked as a child actress in a few of her father's productions such as Pilots (2000), Achaneyanenikkishtam (2001) and Kuberan (2002) and some television serials. 11 years after Kuberan she made her debut as a lead actress in Priyadarshan's horror comedy Geethaanjali, in which she had a dual role. She was still studying during that time and shot for Geethaanjali during her semester break. Reviews on the film and her performance were mixed, with Sify writing that she "does put in some effort but make only limited impression in a double role", while Rediff wrote that she "has got a plum role but whether she impresses with her acting prowess is another matter". In 2014, Keerthy had her next release, Ring Master directed by Rafi of Rafi Mecartin duo in which she shared screen space with Dileep. She played the role of a blind girl, which she said was much more challenging than her double role in Geethanjali. The film was a commercial success, being termed a "super hit" by Sify.

In 2014, Keerthy accepted her first projects outside of Malayalam and signed on to appear in several Tamil film projects simultaneously. Her first film release was A. L. Vijay's romantic comedy Idhu Enna Maayam (2015) opposite Vikram Prabhu, though the film did not perform well at the box office. Her busy schedule throughout 2015 meant that she had to opt out of films which she had already started working on, including Krishna's Maane Thaene Paeye and Deekay's Kavalai Vendam, in order to accommodate bigger projects. She consequently worked on two films with Sivakarthikeyan in quick succession, Rajini Murugan and Remo, while also playing the lead role in Prabhu Solomon's Thodari alongside Dhanush. That year, she also signed up her first Telugu film, Aina Ishtam Nuvvu directed by Ramprasad Ragutu. The film, supposedly an adaptation of Rendu Jella Sita (which was also Aina Ishtam Nuvvu's initial title), was termed "a sweet love story on the lines of the Ramayana" by Keerthy, who would be playing Janaki, a "bubbly playful character" similar to Sita. In January 2017, Keerthy appeared in Bairavaa, opposite actor Vijay and directed by Bharathan..

As of 2014, Keerthy has completed shooting for the art film Darboni in which she would be seen as a Kashmiri girl. Besides she is part of Paambhu Sattai in Tamil, in which she plays a poor Chennai girl from a lower middle class strata, and Nenu Sailaja in Telugu. She has also signed up a film with Suriya titled Thaana Serndha Kootam, directed by Vignesh Shivan and Lead Female role in Saamy 2, The Sequel of Saamy opposite Vikram and Second Lead Trisha Krishnan.. Also, she will be portraying the late southern actress Savitri, in her Tamil-Telugu bilingual biopic titled Mahanati directed by Nag Ashwin, which is yet to begin production.

Awards