Shobana Chandrakumar Pillai (Shobana) was born in 1970 in Thiruvanantham, Kerala, India. Her mother tongue is Malyalam. Shobana is an Indian bharatnatyam (classical) dancer and film actress. She acts mostly in Malayalam language, in addition to Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and English Language Films. She worked very hard to learn all these languages in a short period of time and acted in different languages with expressions. Her hard work paid off and she won two National Film Awards, one Kerala State Film. She has won two National Film Awards, one Kerala State Film Awards and numerous other awards. Shobana did her education (high school) at Tomas higher secondary school. She is the Niece of the Travancore sisters – Lalita, Padmini and Ragini, All of whom were Classical Indian Dancers and actresses. The actress Sukumari was her aunt. Malayalam actress Ambika Sukuaran is her relative. Malayalam actors Vineeth is her cousin and Krishna is her nephew. She has an adopted daughter named Ananthanarayani. Shobana made her debut as a child artist in the Bollywood film Amar Prem in 1972. She established herself as a leading actress in the 1980s and 1990s. As an adult, she was introduced in the film “April 18” which was directed by Balchandra Menon. Shobana was honored by the Government of India with the Padma Shri award for her contributions toward the arts in 2006. In 2014, the Kerala State Government honored her with the Kala Ratna Award. In 2019, She was awarded an honorary doctorate from M.G.R. Educational and Research Institue. Her career is an inspiration to all women to work hard and learn so many languages and understand them. I learned from her career to work hard and achieve success and honor. When I was a child, I wanted to learn Indian classical and other forms of dances like Shobanabut my parents were orthodox and against learning dancing. So I never learned dancing and felt bad not achieving what I wanted to learn. But I am very happy and proud that I was able to send my daughter Amy to learn not just Indian classical, but other forms of dances. It was not easy for me to send her to dance class as I and my husband were struggling financially. First, my husband did not agree to send her to dance class due to financial hardship. Then, my husband got a part-time job, and I was able to convince him to send Amy to dance class. We had cut our expenses in other places and send her to dance class. My daughter is very happy and proud that we sent her to learn dance in our difficult time.

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