Legendary south Indian actress Manorama, the 'Aachi' of Tamil film industry, died on Saturday, 10 October due to multiple organ failure. Her death has come as an irreparable loss to the film industry, which believes that the void created by her death cannot be filled by anyone.
She was born in Mannargudi in the Tiruvarur district as Gopichanda. Abandoned by her biological father, her mother brought her up in poverty, forcing Manorama to start her acting career in theatre at the age of 12.
Manorama graduated in films in "Maalayitta Mangai" in 1958. Kavignar Kannadasan spotted her potential and cast her as heroine in "Konjum Kumari" in 1963. In the later years, she did comedy-oriented roles and her chemistry with late Nagesh was a big hit in those days.
Language had never been a barrier to Manorama as she acted in other language films like Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada as well. Apart from acting, she had also crooned songs in over 300 films.
Manorama acted in over 1500 movies in her career and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 after acting in 1000 feature films. In her career, she worked with almost all the big names of south Indian film industries like MG Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganeshan, NT Rama Rao, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan etc. One of the highlights of her career is that she worked with five chief ministers of Tamil Nadu.
Her Last Speech
Manorama was the special guest at an event organised by cinema journalist association. She shared the stage with Kamal Haasan and Sivakumar. This was the last time that the actress addressed a public event.
Final Journey
The entire film industry paid homage to the actress. Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Vijay, Ajith, Sivakumar, Sarath Kumar, Karthi, Vimal, SImbu and many others condoled the death of the actress along with DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. She was cremated at the Mylapore crematorium in Chennai.
