Rambha (born Vijayalakshmi Yeedi; 5 June 1976) is an Indian former actress. She was one of the prominent actresses in Indian cinema in the 1990s and early 2000s.[1][2][3] In a career spanning almost two decades, Rambha had appeared in more than 100 films across eight languages, predominantly in Telugu and Tamil, in addition to Hindi, Kannada, and Malayalam, along with a few Bengali, Bhojpuri and English films.[1][2][3]
Rambha was born as Vijayalakshmi Yeedi[4] in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh on 5 June 1976[5] into a Telugu family.[6] She did her schooling at Atkinsons Senior Secondary School, Vijayawada. While she was studying in her seventh standard, she acted as Ammavaru (Mother Goddess) for her school's Annual Day competition.[7] The event had been attended by director Hariharan who stayed in contact and later introduced her as the female lead in Malayalam film, Sargam.[7] Her first on-screen name was Amrutha, which she later changed as Rambha after the character name in her Telugu debut movie Aa Okkati Adakku.
Rambha gave up her education aged 15 and then started her career with Hariharan's Malayalam film Sargam (1992) opposite Vineeth. The film performed well at the box office, and she was spotted by director E. V. V. Satyanarayana who then cast her in the Telugu film Aa Okkati Adakku (1992), where she was paired opposite Rajendra Prasad.[8] The film performed well and prompted several films offers for the actress from several different film industries across India. During the height of her career in the late 1990s, Rambha deliberately continued to pick glamorous roles to garner film offers. In successful films such as Hitler (1997) starring Chiranjeevi, Rambha appeared in roles which were inconsequential to the plot and purely depicted as the lead actor's love interest.[8]
She started her career as a producer with help of her brother in Three Roses (2003), in which Jyothika, Laila and Rambha played the lead characters. She sold her house at Mount Road, Chennai in order to pay the debt, while she was also booked in a cheque-bounce case filed by the financiers of the movie.[9]
Rambha has acted in several languages and always maintained a successful balance in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bhojpuri and Bengali. In 2010, Rambha shot alongside Prakash Raj for a thriller film titled Vidiyum Varai Kathiru. The film was shot in three languages namely Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, but the film did not have a theatrical release.[10]
After her marriage she had given up films as she felt her popularity in films has faded away where she notice that she was not getting meaty roles as she used to and has judged a very popular Tamil TV show Maanada Mayilada, and the Telugu dance show Dhee.[1] After a long gap she came back from Toronto, she appeared as a judge of Zee Telugu dance show ABCD-Anybody Can Dance and judged Kings of Comedy Juniors on Vijay TV.
She is a brand ambassador for Kolors health care, Chennai.[11]
Rambha married Indrakumar Pathmanathan, a Canada-based Sri Lankan Tamil businessman, on 8 April 2010 at Karnataka Kalyana Mandapam in Tirumala.[12] They settled in Toronto. They have two daughters and a son.[13][14]