Abhinaya Anandis is a supremely talented and renowned South Indian film actress and model, who has featured in over 47 movies so far (mostly in Tamil, Telegu, English, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada) and many more are underway. She has won innumerable awards for her performances including Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut - South, Vijay Award for Best Debut Actress for Naadodigal (2009) , Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress - Telugu for Shambo Shiva Shambo in 2010 and many more. Despite her mainstream success, her humility and genuine concern for the people around her is refreshingly rare.
She was born on November 8 1991 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Her father MD. Gyananand who has had a major influence on her life was in army, and worked as a film artist, taking up small roles. Her mother, Hemalatha was a home-maker. Abhinaya was born with deafness and was unable to walk. Her parents moved to Hyderabad in few months, and found themselves shocked and clueless. They took her to many hospitals, and finally with intervention, her mobility improved after 3 years.
She wishes that there was more awareness about sign language and successful deaf people among doctors and society, so that her parents weren't so inconsolable. She first studied in a special school where there were children of all kinds of disability, but later on, she was moved to an oral deaf school in Hyderabad and was made to do years of speech therapy. Later, she was put in mainstream school, but it was really difficult to cope up. She says: 'It was just copy-paste during exams, just like ice freezing, the words were mugged and similar to melting ice, they were put down on paper. I understood nothing at all.'
She discontinued studies after Class X. She taught herself reading and writing, looking at captions in the movies/ TV serials. Looking back, she feels she missed out on learning a lot of things, and is still making efforts to catch up.
Abhinaya was cochler implanted in 2004 at the age of 13 years. She describes this experience as excruciating, and wonders whether it made any sense to have CI at such a late stage, when the benefits were so limited and risks were high. But neither her parents, nor she were properly informed about the procedure and its long term impact. She thought the ordeal would be just once, but she wasn't aware that the implant requires regular repair and maintenance, which put a considerable financial burden on their family. She still experiences annoying pain every time she takes out the implant, hence she keeps to it on - 'It is quite like an addiction', she jokes at the irony of her situation. She feels there is nothing wrong in being deaf, and she did not really need a cochlear implant. She is proud of her deaf identity and feels deaf people are equal to hearing people.
Her father never dreamt that his deaf daughter could be an actress. Abhinaya remembers once going on a set with her father and being mesmerized by the entire visual stimuli, the retakes, the lights and the chaos. That sparked an interest in her, and sometimes she spent hours by herself copying expressions with her, she thought her parents might feel she is nuts. But her father encouraged her, and she started doing small roles in movies even as young as 12-13 years.
At the age of 17 years, she was spotted by a director P. Samudhirakani for Naadodigal (2009), a Tamil movie. She recalls her screening test, with no background in acting or formal training, she was able to bring out natural expressions in one shot without any retakes. This movie became a huge hit, had remakes in other languages and this kickstarted her career. She did multiple movies after that and became a celebrity. It wasn't easy, she struggled to communicate with other people and there was a lot of back and forth writing. She did not have full understanding of many languages, and would read the translations in English to prepare for her roles.
There aren't many deaf people in film industry. Abhinaya was really heart broken with the untimely demise of Dhruv Sharma, another deaf actor (Kannada cinema) and celebrity cricketer. They had done a movie together in 2016, and another one was planned but Dhruv passed away in 2017. It would have been an amazing achievement to have two leading deaf actors in more movies.
She feels deeply disappointed that deaf actors are not chosen for movies with deaf characters. There's so much authenticity and depth that they can bring to the deaf character which a hearing actor absolutely cannot, including the accuracy of sign language.
Abhinaya knows there are many talented deaf actors in the country, but without accessible platforms and support systems, the world will not be able to recognize their talents. It is her cherished dream that one day that doors of opportunities open up for other deaf people as well in the film industry. She wishes to start an acting school someday and train deaf people in acting.
Some news articles about Abhinaya:
The Hindu : Abhinaya's 'abhinaya'
Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhinaya_(actress)
IMDB : https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4572244/bio
Abhinaya's Instagram
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