Shamlee

Shamlee is from a family of actors, being the younger sister to actor Richard Rishi and actress Shalini. She was born to Babu and Alice. Her father migrated to Madras with an ambition of becoming an actor and the family settled there. Later he fulfilled his ambition through his children.^[2]

Shamlee started acting at the age of two in Tamil Cinema with the Vijaykanth starrer Rajanadai. In 1990, she acted in Bharathan's Malootty, a film based on Jessica McClure. Her performance won her critical appreciation and the Kerala State Film Award for Best Child Artist.^[3] Her breakthrough came with Mani Ratnam's Anjali, in which she portrayed a mentally challenged child, which earned her widespread critical acclaim across South India and the National Film Award for Best Child Artist.^[4][5] At that time, Shamlee was regarded as one of the youngest income tax assessees ever.^[6] After Anjali, Shamlee became inarguably the most sought out child artist in South Indian cinema and, thus in subsequent years, acted in many roles in all four South Indian languages.^[7]

In 2009, she played her first female lead role in Anand Ranga's directorial debut Oy! (2009) alongside Siddarth with her performance receiving a mixed response.^[8][9] Between 2010 and 2015, Shamili studied and worked in Singapore and later returned to Chennai to work on the production of Veera Shivaji alongside Vikram Prabhu in 2016, which was panned by critics. Her performance also received negative reviews with indiaglitz claiming “Shamlee gets a forgettable debut as a heroine in Tamil. Her lip sync is poor and the scenes involving her do no help her either”.^[10] and sify also stating she is “as stiff as a wax statue with barely any emotion”.^[11] Shamili also acted in the Malayalam film Valleem Thetti Pulleem Thetti the same year, which was also panned and received negative reviews.^[12]