Sai Pallavi was born on 9 May 1992 in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu in a Badaga family to Senthamarai Kannan and Radha. And she is the first person from her town Kotagiri to act in the films.
She completed medical studies at the Tbilisi State Medical University in 2016.
Sai Pallavi has never been trained in any form of dance. She watched Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit’s videos to learn how to dance.
She participated in dance reality shows Ungalil Yaar Adutha Prabhu Deva on Vijay TV in 2008, and in Dhee Ultimate Dance Show (D4) on ETV in 2009.
Before Premam, Sai Pallavi acted as a child actress in Kasthuri Maan (2005) and Dhaam Dhoom (2008).
Sai Pallavi almost didn’t feature in the movie Premam, because she mistook Premam’s director, Alphonse Puthren, for a stalker when he approached her for the role of Malar.
Sai Pallavi acted in the film Premam over the holidays and, after the shooting finished, returned to her studies. She initially didn’t know that the hit song Malare was picturised on her, and she didn’t know the song was meant to highlight her.
In late 2015, she again took a month break from her studies to act in her second movie, Kali.
Sai Pallavi rejected fairness cream ad deal worth Rs 2 crore, she said
“I don’t endorse beauty products. You need to be confident about who you are and your skin colour. What am I going to do with the money I get from such an ad? I’ll go home and eat three chapatis or rice. I do not have any other big needs.
I see whether I can contribute to the happiness of people around me or I can say that the standards we have are wrong. This is the Indian colour. We can’t go to foreigners and ask them why they’re white, and if they know that they will get cancer because of it. That’s their skin colour and this is ours.”
Sai Pallavi can speak her mother tongue Badaga in addition to Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, English, Hindi and Georgian languages.