Punnagai Poo Gheetha

Biography:

Gheetha Ammasee is a Malaysian radio personality, actor, and film producer who works in both the Tamil cinema business in India and Malaysia. She is best known by her stage name, “Punnagai Poo” Gheetha.

Prior to founding her own production company and breaking into the Tamil film industry, Gheetha was well-known for her work as a radio host on the Malaysian radio station THR Raaga. She was also acknowledged as the country’s first female producer. She has also performed in several Malaysian films and several Kollywood productions as a hostess.

Gheetha Ammasee, a plantation owner’s daughter, was born in Taiping, Perak, Malaysia, into a Tamil family. Prior to beginning her career as a radio jockey at the Malaysian Tamil radio station THR Raaga, she hosted a show called Rhythm And Raaga on the Malaysian television channel NTV7.

She began her employment at THR Raaga in the beginning. In addition to her radio career, she made telefilms, worked as a host, and started her own advertising agency, SG. “Smiling flower” in Tamil, “Punnagai Poo” is the nickname she earned while she was a student at THR Raaga.

Gheetha traveled to India and founded SG Films, a production company, in order to work on the film Arinthum Ariyamalum, which her family friend Vishnuvardhan was directing. Due to distributors’ lack of confidence in a foreign investor and female producer, she was forced to independently release the movie.

The movie ran in theaters for 175 days and earned double its cost at the box office. Gheetha also made history as the “first female Tamil movie producer to have produced a Tamil movie in India” by being included into the Malaysian Book of Records.

Following her funding of Kundakka Mandakka, a low-budget comedy film starring R. Parthipan and Vadivelu, Gheetha was able to introduce five Malaysian actors to the Tamil film industry.

She and Vishnuvardhan then decided to work together once more on the director’s next project, Pattiyal, which also turned out to be a financial success. She took a hiatus from Indian film after Pattiyal and went back to work in Malaysia. Alongside actor Vivek, she co-hosted the 2010 Enthiran music release event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Following a five-year hiatus, she made her film debut in Narthagi, a drama about transgender people starring all new actors in which she also had a brief role. The next year, she produced the Sonia Agarwal-starring female-centric film Oru Nadigaiyin Vaakkumoolam, for which Gheetha had a longer supporting part as a journalist and seven days of filming.

Then, she landed her first major role in the Tamil movie Maindhan, which was released in Malaysia. Despite having appeared in cameos and supporting roles in her previous films, she declared that acting was not something she was “very much interested” in.

She rejected director C. Kumaresan’s offer of the lead female role in Maindhan at first, and she avoided him for a week until he was able to persuade her. In the movie, Gheetha, who plays an event manager, did stunts by herself and got hurt doing so.

Gheetha later won the Edison Award for Best Overseas Artist in India, while Maindhan went on to become the biggest grossing locally made Tamil film in Malaysian history. The film also had a theatrical distribution in India.

She is co-producing two upcoming movies: Sivappu, which she co-produced with Muktha Entertainment and which is about Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka living in Tamil Nadu. and Kaaval, where she was the first Malaysian to play the lead in an Indian film, earning her an award from the Malaysian Book of Records for the role of female lead.