Many actresses had immense acting talent but for some reason or the other, they could not have a long and successful career. Today, we will be talking about a yesteryear actress who worked with all the big superstars of the film industry in her memorable career but gave up her life at a very young age.
We are talking about the famous actress of South Cinema, Jayalakshmi, whose popular screen name was Fatafat Jayalakshmi. She was mainly active in Tamil and Telugu films. She was known as Supriya in Malayalam films.
Jayalakshmi acted in about 66 movies in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada within a decade of her career. She worked in all the big stars of the time during her career. Jayalakshmi debuted in 1972 in Telugu movie 'Iddaru Ammayilu' which has Akkineni Nageswara Rao in the lead role.
In the same year, she also appeared in A Vincent's Malayalam film 'Theerthayathra' with the screen name Supriya, followed by 'Ithu Manushyano?' in 1973.
In 1974, she made her Tamil debut in 'Aval Oru Thodar Kathai' where she was credited as Jayalakshmi. She became a household name with her popular dialogue ‘Fatafat’ (meaning quickly) which became her prefix and she came to be known as Fatafat Jayalakshmi.
Throughout her career, Jayalakshmi worked with many big stars, some still active today including Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Krishna, NTR, and Chiranjeevi.
In 2018, in an interview, Rajinikanth was asked to pick his favorite actress and he named Fatafat Jayalakshmi.
As for her personal life, Fatafat Jayalakshmi was married to the nephew of MG Ramachandran. However, she met a tragic end when she committed suicide by hanging in 1980, at the age of 22, at the peak of her career, over an alleged failed romance.
