Veteran actress Jayanthi's family denies 'death' rumours, says she is recovering well

Pic Courtesy: Movie Still

New Delhi: Veteran actress Jayanthi aka Kamala Kumari's 'death' rumours surfaced online after she complained of difficulty in breathing and was admitted to the hospital. After reports of her demise started doing the rounds on social media, her family slammed the rumours and said that Jayanthi is on the path to recovery and is responding well.

Sakshi.com quoted Jayanthi's son as telling the media, "There is no truth in the news of Jayanti's death in social media. Some TV channels reported that she was dead which is untrue as they were confused regarding her health.”

Jayanthi has worked in over 500 films in several languages. She ruled the screens from the 1960s to 1980s respectively. She featured in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi languages films. Jayanthi has been awarded two Karnataka State Film Awards for Best Actress, the President's Medal for Best Actress and two Filmfare Awards for Best Actress throughout her career. 

In fact, the Kannada film industry even honoured her with the title "Abhinaya Sharadhe", meaning Goddess Sharada in acting—such refined is her skill and acting prowess. She often shared the screen space with classic actor Gemini Ganesan. In Tamil films, she acted with almost all the biggies including MG Ramachandran, Gemini Ganesan, R Muthuraman and Jaishankar. Also, renowned filmmaker K Balachander did several films with Jayanthi. She acted with Jayalalitha and Manorama in 'Mugaraasi'.

In 2009, Jayanthi gave her voice to an HIV/AIDS education animated software tutorial created by the nonprofit organization TeachAIDS. She even featured in American comedy-drama 'Brown Nation' in 2016. The series was directed by Abi Varghese and written by Matt Grubb, George Kanatt and Varghese. 'Brown Nation' released in all 190 countries offering Netflix on November 15, 2016.

The thespian was admitted to Vikram Hospital in Bengaluru and complained of 'chronic severe asthma and acute respiratory failure'.

Here's wishing her a speedy recovery!

(Errata: An earlier news report on the actress had claimed that she was dead which later turned out to be false. We sincerely regret the inadvertent error.)