Outpouring of grief in India as one of the biggest names in cinema dies in Dubai

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Sridevi Kapoor, a pioneering woman in Indian cinema who riveted audiences for nearly five decades, died in Dubai at the weekend.

Crowds gathered outside Kapoor’s Mumbai home on Sunday as tributes poured in from politicians, sportspeople, film colleagues and fans for the actor known simply as Sridevi.



“I have no words. Condolences to everyone who loved Sridevi. A dark day. RIP,” actor Priyanka Chopra wrote on Twitter.



“Saddened by the untimely demise of noted actor Sridevi,” the Indian prime minister, Narenda Modi, tweeted. “She was a veteran of the film industry, whose long career included diverse roles and memorable performances. My thoughts are with her family and admirers in this hour of grief.”

Kapoor, who was 54, had been in Dubai attending a family wedding when she reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest.

A versatile performer, who became one of the first women to dominate Indian cinema from the 1970s, Sridevi was celebrated for her ability to bring nuance and depth to her roles.

She made her debut half a century ago as a child actor in the Tamil film industry, winning her first lead role in Bollywood in 1979’s Solva Sawan.

She acted in films across India’s cinema industries, also appearing in Hindi, Malayalam and Telugu films and in performances alongside leading men such as Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajinikanth.

Haasan said on Sunday he was “haunted” by the lullaby from the 1983 film Sadma in which Sridevi played a woman with retrograde amnesia, described by many critics as a milestone performance.

She loomed so large in 1987’s Mr India that critics joked the film should have been called Miss India.

Sridevi’s intensely private nature was at odds with the stardom that earned her the moniker No 1 Heroine. “She had an invisible wall around her and she does not let anyone cross that,” said Ram Gopal Verma, a director and two-time collaborator, in an open letter on Sunday.

Born Shree Amma Yanger Ayappan in Tamil Nadu state, Sridevi appeared regularly in roles from the age of four until 31, when she took a break from films after marrying producer Boney Kapoor, of one of India’s most prestigious acting dynasties.

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In an interview with the New Indian Express in 2013, Sridevi spoke of missing out on a carefree childhood when she began working as an actor.

“I lost out on going to school and college life but I got into the film industry and worked without a gap – from child actor I went straight to heroine. There was no time to think and I was grateful for it,” she said.

“In order to get something you have to lose something. You can’t have everything in life. So I am happy with what I got.”

She made a successful return to the big screen in Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish (2012), playing a housewife taking English-language lessons. Her last and 300th screen appearance was in Mom (2017) where she played a mother avenging her daughter’s rape.

The director Subhash Ghai called her “the uncrowned queen of acting in all languages in her times”. “I am deeply grieved for this shocking loss,” he said on Twitter. “Sridevi has not [just] been one of the finest actors but the finest actor of Indian cinema since 1985.”



In 2013 Sridevi was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours, for her decades of service to the film industry.



One of Bollywood’s leading actors, Akshay Kumar, expressed his shock at the “untimely demise”. He tweeted: “A dream for many, had the good fortune of sharing screen space with her long ago and witnessed her continued grace over the years.”

The cricketer Sachin Tendulkar said: “We all grew up watching her and suddenly to hear that she is no longer with us is hard to digest.”

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report