Kasthuri Shankar

She was born to Sumathi Shankar, a lawyer and P.S. Shankar, an engineer, and was named Shanmathi, a portmanteau of her parents' names. She has one younger brother, who studied computer science at IIT and later did his post-graduate studies at Princeton University. She married Sreekumar Subramanian, an Indian-American cardiothoracic surgeon in 2000. After serving as a surgeon in the US Air Force, he now works in Nashville, Tennessee. The couple have 2 children, a son and a daughter. Her daughter is a leukaemia survivor.[2]

After graduation from Ethiraj College for Women, Kasthuri won Miss Chennai in 1992. In the same year, she won the Femina Miss Madras beauty pageant too. While studying in college, she started her career in modelling over interest in the domain.[3] Not only was she a successful model, but also, she was a finalist in the BBC's Mastermind India 2000 quiz. Her acting career began in 1991 with the film, Aatha Un Koyilile (1991). From working on small budget Tamil films, she went on to work into more mainstream movies alongside legends, such as Kamal Haasan in Indian (1996). A 30-minute documentary film, Kasthuri: A South Indian Film Star, was released as a tribute to her success in the film industry. She gained attention for her acting skills in Annamayya (1997) and dance performance in Kaadhal Kavithai (1998).

However, she decided to make a comeback as a supporting actress and television host. Her debut comeback film was Malai Malai (2009) and also worked on Vina Vidai Vettai (2013-2014) for Puthuyugam TV.

She also notably portrayed a key supporting role as an investigative agent in Adhik Ravichandran's Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangadhavan (2017), appearing alongside Silambarasan.[4]

Kasthuri is an active commentator regarding social issues through an occasional column with the Times of India and via Twitter, and her tweets have sometimes elicited debate in the media.[12] In early 2017, she questioned Rajinikanth's ability as a potential politician, and her opinion garnered criticism from the actor's fans.[13][14] In late 2018, she criticised Rajinikanth's ignorance over the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and engaged in a further exchange with Rajinikanth's supporters.[15] Kasthuri spoke out as a part of the Me Too movement in India, suggesting that her reluctance to give into patriarchal behaviour meant that she was removed from several film projects. She revealed that one male actor took a particular vengeance against her for her rebuff to his advances, and subsequently made it difficult for her to work on other projects.[2][16][17] She criticised directors Bharathiraja and S. Shankar in April 2019, she said director Bharathiraja and his son has black skin and they use North Indian girls with lighter skin in their movies while S. Shankar goes a long way and imports white skin foreign girls in his movies.[18] While Kasthuri declares herself an Indian patriot, her husband and two children are all US-born American citizens. During the row over the comments made by DMK MP Elangovan against Hindi, Kasthuri criticized him stating that she was personally offended as she was of mixed lineage herself,[19] referring to the fact that her father was a Nair and her mother an Iyer.

A person, who claimed himself to be actor Ajith's fan, had allegedly made sexist comments against Kasturi Shankar in January 2020. A week after this, Kasthuri Shankar blasted him, by suggesting him to ask his mother or sister if he wants a woman for sex. She used the tag #dirtyajithfans, which started trending in India. Some fans of Ajith created #DirtyKasthuriAunty to counter this. A war of words continued and created a controversy.[20]

Her hashtag #TheVidiyalArasu denoting DMK government in tamilnadu led by MK Stalin went viral in the social media[21]

Television

• Kasthuri at IMDb