ABP The Southern Rising Summit: Indian actress and director Revathi graced the stage as a speaker at ABP Network's 'The Southern Rising Summit' in Chennai on Thursday, October 12. This round was moderated by journalist, author and film critic Kaveri Bamzai.


Making her acting debut with the Tamil film 'Mann Vasanai' in 1983, which was a silver jubilee hit and she was rewarded with a Filmfare Special Award – South, she moved on to make her Malayalam film debut with the movie titled 'Kattathe Kilikkoodu' in 1983, after which she was introduced to Telugu film industry. Being a recipient of three National Film Awards and six Filmfare Awards South, Revathi is one of the finest Indian actors we have today.


In the conversation with Kaveri Bamzai, Revathi spoke about her film 'Mouna Rangam', the reason behind her grasp in so many languages and much more.


Talking about her film 'Mouna Ragam' which she did when she was 20 years old, Revathi said, "Mouna Ragam was a film that happened in those days and it was Mani's fourth film and there was nobody who wanted to do the film. It took time, but then in the end the story is so beautiful that his brother decided to produce it and then it happened. That film is very close to my heart because that was one of the first films in my career where the performance was muted, very realistic. I have been a part of many commercial films, but there was something about this film, and in 1986 when this film was made, where a girl talked about divorce and it was not a good thing because she was immediately termed as being defiant and not a good girl. So, it was something different."


She went to talk about how wromen-oriented films have seen a transformation today saying, "There are women-oriented films. It's just that stories have changed, story-telling has changed, film making has changed and I think the importance of characterisation has changed over the years. The society has changed. The way we dress up today has also changed compared to the way we used to do in the 80s, so automatically, film industry has also changed."


Revathi has not just worked in the South Indian film industry, but across industries.


On being asked whether her hold over the languages comes from her army background Revathi said, "Absolutely! My father is a retired army officer and he moved places in every two or three years, so you tend to adapt easily. Basically, I did not have an accent and I was not really fluent in any language. So, it took me time to understand languages, speak it and thanfully I didn't have any acent, so it was easy for me to handle all the languages."


Revathi then went to talk about her Bollywood film with Salman Khan which was 'Love' saying that it was her only crazy romantic film.


"The original was in telegu and I was in it as well and they wanted me to do the same role in the Bollywood one too. I loved it and the director is a good friend of mine and when he narrated the story, I kind of laughed it."


"In my younger days also I did not get to do the typical romance film, so it was very interesting. I loved the songs," she added.


As the conversation flowed, Revathi was asked about not doing films after a certain point of time, and whether it only happens to female actors to which she said that it is mostly a case with female actors.


"There is a phase where you are playing the lead roles, then you go into characters, you are also confused and don't know whether you want to go ahead with that and then you try to get roles which are written in very few numbers. So, then its kind of a balance you are trying to create because you've done such fabulous films and then you are just given characters. It has happened to me when you know, you are just there to bring a little more character to the role. So, its a confused period- from being in the lead role to transitioning into the character roles."


Meanwhile on the workfront, Revathi will next be seen in 'Tiger 3'.