Radhika Sarathkumar

Radhika Sarathkumar is a Tamil television and film actress, successful entrepreneur and producer. She is the founder of Radaan Mediaworks, which has produced the successful serials Chithi, Annamalai Selvi, Arasi, Idi Katha Kadu (Telugu) and currently she is acting a new serial Chellamay in Sun TV.

Radhika is the daughter of the late Tamil actor and comedian, M. R. Radha (Mohan Rajagopala Radhakrishnan Naidu). Her mother is a Sri Lankan. She has a younger sister named Nirosha (Niroja), who is also an actress. Actor and politician R. Radharavi is Radhika's elder stepbrother.

She is married to actor Sarath Kumar, with whom she has a son named Rahul. Rahul was born in 2004. She was married twice prior to marrying actor Sarathkumar. Her first marriage to the Malayalee actor-cum-director, Prathap K. Pothan, ended in divorce. As did her second marriage to Richard Hardy, who is a British national and by whom she has a daughter named Rayanne Hardy.

Fellow actress-cum-writer-cum-director Suhasini Maniratnam is a close friend of Radhika, who has been with her during her hard times and lent a shoulder. Radhika and Suhasini hit it off during their first meeting for a film shoot and went on to become thick friends. Though Radhika was very good at acting, her make-up and hair styles were much wanting. Suhasini Maniratnam at her peak being a serious competitor for Radhika, has been Radhika's helping hand in redefining her looks and life. Suhasini in fact got an approval from Director Vasanth, of Keladi Kanmani, a come-back movie of Radhika, to be with Radhika on her sets and be her hair dresser and make-up artist. People still admire their friendship though both of them have gone ahead in different work paths after their peak stardom. Some of her other good friends in the film fraternity are Ramya Krishnan, Saritha and Sripriya.

Radhika Sarathkumar has acted in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi as well as Malayalam films. After becoming successful in cinema, Radhika wanted to do something different and decided to take on the small screen, a venture that everyone thought was a mistake she would regret. But determined to pursue something she believed in, namely producing her own TV software under the Radaan TV banner, she pressed on. That was in 1994. After some initial hiccups, the company re-emerged successfully as Radaan Mediaworks Ltd in 1999, and by 2008, has an annual turnover exceeding Rs.10 crore. In 2004, the company ventured into film production in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi markets. Radaan has plans to enter into Hindi television market.

In recent years she has acted as the title character in several hit megaserials produced by her company, Radaan Mediaworks. Her first hit drama was "Chitti", a 488-episode serial in which she portrayed the main character, Saradha. The serial was widely watched and praised throughout the Tamil-speaking world. Fresh off the success of "Chitthi", Radhika went on to produce another, longer Tamil serial, the 757-episode "Annamalai", in which she once again played the major role. Her co-star in both these first two serials was the veteran actor Sivakumar, with whom she was often paired in films as well. However in "Annamalai", he played her eldest brother. She recently played a dual role in the teleserial Arasi, the sequel to the teleserial Selvi. Arasi has also recently been completed and is followed by yet another serial featuring herself called Chellamey.

Prepared by: Dr. Susie Pazhavarical