Nithya Menen Bags National Award For Best Actress

The 70th National Film Awards were announced in the national capital on Friday, August 16. The jury comprised Rahul Rawail as chairman of the feature film jury, Nila Madhab Panda as chairman of the non-feature film jury and Gangadhar Mudalair as chairman of the best screenplay for film jury. Nithya Menen and Manasi Parekh both received the Best Actress award, with Nithya being recognised for her performance in the Tamil film Thiruchitrambalam and Manasi for her role in the Gujarati film Kutch Express. Nithya Menen is an actress and singer who mainly works in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu films. She started her career as a child actress in the French-Indian-English film Hanuman (1998), where she played the younger sister of Tabu’s character. She made her screen debut with the Kannada film 7 O’Clock (2006). Since then, she has done many successful films including Ala Modalaindi, Gallanthayyinde, Ishq and Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju. She made her Bollywood debut in the film Mission Mangal, starring Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan.

Nithya’s film Thiruchitrambalam is a romantic comedy-drama film starring Dhanush in the lead role. Directed by Mithran R Jawahar, the film revolves around Thiruchitrambalam (played by Dhanush), who lives with his father and grandfather. He blames the former for the loss of his mother and sister and does not get along well with the latter. His love life is not so successful. In the film, Nithya played the role of Shobana, a childhood friend of Thiruchitrambalam.

The film received positive reviews from the critics and grossed Rs 94.25 crore in 18 days.

Nithya Menen was born and brought up in Bangalore, Karnataka and still lives there. Her parents were also born and brought up in Bangalore. Nithya completed her education at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. She then went on to study journalism and communication at Manipal University but fate had something else in store for her. Later, she applied for further studies in cinematography when Nandini Reddy saw her and asked her to act in her first Telugu film Ala Modalaindhi in 2011.