Her mother died from pancreatic cancer in 2009. She says: "I was very happy to leave the industry because it was too tiring and it was hard work." Selvarajoo stopped acting and moved to London to study, along with her brothers. When one of her brothers was admitted to Imperial College in London, the family made the decision to put education first. Yes, we live in the limelight but for people who are so close-knit, it was difficult to sacrifice family for the limelight." She says: "Some people think it's very easy. One parent would be with her in India while the other would be in Singapore to take care of her two younger brothers.
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She was soon in the thick of movie action, filming up to three films in one day as she flew from Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram to Bangalore.Īsked if she earned quite a bit as an actress then and she replies with a hearty laugh: "Yeah."īut she also adds that her family chalked up huge bills in airfares between India and Singapore and in long-distance calls. She says: "I couldn't believe it was me up on the screen, the applause was humongous and I was very deeply touched." And the audience response finally sparked her interest in films. The director asked her to watch the movie in a cinema on its opening day. He was blessing me in that way."īut she thought to herself: "After this movie, I'm going back, how can I be one of the leading ladies here?" Her cast-mates included Tamil cinema legend Sivaji Ganesan, who said to her at their first meeting: "You will definitely be one of the leading ladies. "Saying 'hi' or 'hello' was considered to be rude and you had to say 'vanakam' or 'good morning' in a very formal way." They also speak Tamil but speak very fast and sometimes you can't even understand what they're saying. We speak a different kind of Tamil dialect in Singapore. She says: "Everything was a shock, from the food to the culture. Her maiden film outing was not quite smooth- sailing.
It was Barathiraja who directed her in her first movie, Muthal Mariyathai, and christened her Ranjini, which means light or joy in Sanskrit. That turned into two months of shooting, publicity commitments, more film offers and soon enough, Sasha Selvarajoo turned into Ranjini the movie star. It was at the behest of her father that she and her mother ended up going to India for what they thought would be a "two-week break" from school. We didn't know anyone in India and I was reluctant to go." She says: "My mother and I were against it.
Thus ended what could have been her first brush with fame at the age of 13.īut Bhagyaraj had taken some photographs of her and these eventually made their way about two years later to Bharathiraja, who was impressed enough to make an overseas call to Singapore with a film offer.Įven then, Selvarajoo, the eldest of three children, was no eager wannabe with stars in her eyes. We're not interested in movies and she's very keen on her studies'." Speaking over the telephone from Cochin, Selvarajoo recalls: "My parents said, 'No way, she's still young. Top Indian director Bhagyaraj told them he was keen to cast their daughter in films but they turned him down. Her parents, who distributed Tamil movies here, got to know some of the personalities in the industry. She attended school at St Margaret's Primary and Christchurch Secondary. Selvarajoo was born in Singapore and grew up in the Bendemeer area. I like to do something worthwhile and not conform to stereotypes." There's always people crying or somebody torturing someone.
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She says this was preferable to acting in a TV series because, as she puts it: "You meet ordinary people and you judge people on their, say, dancing skills or intelligence.