Rambha (born Vijayalakshmi; 5 June 1976) is an Indian actress. In a career spanning of almost two decades, Rambha had appeared in more than 100 films across eight regional languages, predominantly in Telugu and Tamil, in addition to Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi along with few Bengali, Bhojpuri and English films. She was one of the prominent actresses in India in the 90s and 2000s. Early life and background Rambha was born as Vijayalakshmi in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh on 5 June 1976 into a Telugu family. She did her schooling at Atkinsons Senior Secondary School, Vijayawada. While she was studying in her seventh standard, she acted as Ammavaru (Mother Goddess) for her school's Annual Day competition. The event had been attended by director Hariharan who stayed in contact and later introduced her as the female lead in Malayalam film, Sargam. Her first on-screen name was Amrutha, which she later changed as Rambha after the character name in her Telugu debut movie Aa Okkati Adakku. Career Rambha gave up her education aged 15 and then started her career with Hariharan's Malayalam film Sargam (1992) opposite Vineeth. The film performed well at the box office, and she was spotted by director E. V. V. Satyanarayana who then cast her in the Telugu film Aa Okkati Adakku (1992), where she was paired opposite Rajendra Prasad. The film performed well and prompted several films offers for the actress from several different film industries across India. During the height of her career in the late 1990s, Rambha deliberately continued to pick glamorous roles to garner film offers. In successful films such as Hitler (1997) starring Chiranjeevi, Rambha appeared in roles which were inconsequential to the plot and purely depicted as the lead actor's love interest. She started her career as a producer with help of her brother in Three Roses (2003), in which Jyothika, Laila and Rambha played the lead characters. However, the film failed at the box office, and she fell heavily into debt after the film's release. She sold her house at Mount Road, Chennai in order to pay the debt, while she was also booked in a cheque-bounce case filed by the financiers of the movie. Rambha has acted in several languages and always maintained a successful balance in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bhojpuri and Bengali. In 2010, Rambha shot alongside Prakash Raj for a thriller film titled Vidiyum Varai Kathiru. The