New Delhi: Meenakshi Seshadri, one of Hindi cinema’s most recognisable faces of the 1980s and 1990s, has relocated to Mumbai after spending nearly three decades in the US and said she is looking for meaningful work in films and OTT platforms.
In an Instagram video posted on Monday, the actor said she had moved back to her “karmabhoomi” Mumbai and had stepped “once again, into the entertainment industry with hope, passion and positivity”. She said she was open to a lead role, supporting character or even a short show, as long as it allowed for an “impactful performance”.
“I want to explore roles that challenge me as an artist, and help me discover new dimensions of my craft,” Seshadri said.
The actor said she had received offers, but some “weren’t exciting enough” while others “simply didn’t materialise”. She added that she was managing the return herself, without an agency.
“I’m not here to prove any point,” she said. “I’m simply doing what truly makes me happy.”
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13-year-old Bollywood career
Seshadri made her film debut with Painter Babu in 1983, but it was her second film, Subhash Ghai’s Hero, that made her a star. The film also introduced Jackie Shroff in his first lead role, and paired the two newcomers in a romantic-action story that became one of the major Hindi film successes.
She went on to work across commercial Hindi cinema through the 1980s and 1990s, with films such as Meri Jung, Shahenshah, Ghayal, Damini and Ghatak. But it is Damini that remains her defining role. Seshadri played a woman who witnesses the rape of a domestic worker by her brother-in-law and his friends, and then fights her husband’s family and the legal system to seek justice.
The film stood apart because rape in mainstream Hindi cinema had often been used to mark a woman as “ruined” or to trigger a male revenge story. Damini shifted the moral centre to the woman who refused to look away. Sunny Deol’s courtroom dialogues became the film’s most quoted legacy, but Seshadri carried its central conflict: whether a woman inside a powerful family could still choose truth over silence.
After Ghatak, released in 1996, Seshadri stepped away from mainstream Hindi cinema following her marriage and moved to the US. In her Instagram video, she said she is now primarily based in India, though she continues to spend vacation time with her family in the US.
“To all my dear fans, I request you to continue supporting me, sharing your feedback and spreading the word,” she said.
Tarini Unnikrishnan is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning at ThePrint.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)