Manju Bhargavi

Biography:

Manju Bhargavi is an actress and dancer best remembered for her roles in the 1980 Telugu blockbusters Sankarabharanam and Nayakudu Vinayakudu, which both came out one day apart in the same year.

Manju Bhargavi’s parents originally hailed from Andhra Pradesh but settled in Madras. After marriage she settled in Bengaluru.

She performed at numerous dance shows and received classical dance training. Filmmaker Prakash Rao first noticed her at one of these performances and then hired her for a dance scene in the Telugu movie Gaalipataalu (1974). In the successful movies Krishnaveni (1974), Soggadu (1975), and Yamagola (1977), it resulted in dancing sequences. Additionally, she played a vamp opposite ANR and Jayalalitha in Nayakudu Vinayakudu. After being hired for the dance sequence in the movie President Peramma, director K. Vishwanath requested that she send some pictures of herself without any makeup. She agreed, and when he saw the results, he decided to use her in the lead role of his next movie as an unglamorous dancer.

Sankarabharanam (1979), a Telugu cinematic classic that broke box office records. In addition to the dubbed version of Sankarabharanam, she has also appeared in important Malayalam films. She performed a Tamil song for the 1980 film “BILLA” and made a cameo appearance alongside Kamal Haasan in the iconic classical dance scene from the 1983 film Saagara Sangamam. She was happy with the movie because it made her famous and earned her respect, but because of her height, she didn’t obtain many movie roles after that. Instead, she chose to focus on her dancing programs and managing the dance school. She has Deepa Sashindran as one of her students.