Showing all artists born in April 29

Oviya is an Indian model and film actress, who mainly works in the Tamil film industry. She rose to fame with the 2010 comedy film Kalavani.

Oviya completed BA in Functional English at Vimala college in Thrissur, before director Sargunam approached her for Kalavani. The film saw her feature opposite Vimal, and the film subsequently gained positive reviews and went on to become a sleeper hit at the box office. 

She subsequently received several offers. She was seen in half-a-dozen films in the following 12 months, including a guest appearance in Kamal Haasan's Manmadhan Ambu and the Kannada and Telugu remakes of Kalavani, in which she reprised her character from the original. 

She is shooting for several Tamil films, including Pandiraj's Marina, Sundar C.'s Kalakalappu, and Silu Silunu Oru Kadhal, opposite her Kalavani co-star Vimal.

Swarnalatha (29 April 1973 – 12 September 2010) was an Indian playback singer. From 1987 onward, she rendered nearly 7,000 songs in many languages including Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, Urdu, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi and Badaga.

She won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for her rendition of the song "Porale Ponnuthayi" from the film Karuththamma. The song was composed by A. R. Rahman, under whose musical direction she recorded many memorable songs. Her distinctive voice, which could effortlessly reach high octaves, quickly made her a name to reckon with in the playback music industry.

Personal life

She was born in the village Kizhakkaepparra near Athikkode near Chittur, Palakkad, Kerala, to K. C. Cherukutty and Tamil mother Kalyani. Swarnalatha had many brothers and sisters and was the last born of a big family of music lovers. Her father was a good harmonium player and singer. Her mother also had an interest in music. Swarnalatha was trained on the harmonium and keyboard.  Swarnalatha's family later moved to Bhadravathi (Paper Town) in Shimoga District, where she had her education.  Born in a family of musicians (father K. C. Cherukutty was a singer and harmonium player, while sister Saroja was her music guru initially), Swarnalatha took to music when she was in her teens.

Career

When Swarnalatha was still a child, her family moved to Chennai to seek film opportunities for her singing talent. The first opportunity came from M. S. Viswanathan in 1987, when she performed a duet with K. J. Yesudas, "Chinnanchirukiliye Kannamma" in the film Neethikku Thandanai.  Subsequently, many other music directors approached her to perform their songs. She also had the opportunity to work with director P. Venu. She was recruited by legendary musicians like Ilaiyaraaja and A. R. Rahman. She also recorded a few Hindi songs, the most notable one being "Hai Rama Yeh Kya Hua" from Rangeela along with Hariharan.

She was one of the most versatile singers of her times, as she was able to sing melodies like "Maalayil Yaaro Manathodu Pesa" from Sathriyan or "Porale Ponnuthayi" from Karuthamma as well as Rahman's experimental songs like "Mukkabla" from Kadhalan or "Mottu Vittadha" from Pavithra. Swarnalatha was the first female playback singer to fetch the National Award in A. R. Rahman's music for the song "Porale Ponnuthayi". Once in an interview, she said that she was moved to tears when she finished the recording of this song and received praise from A. R. Rahman. She recorded many other songs with music directors Deva, Vidyasagar, Harris Jayaraj, Anu Malik, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Raj-Koti, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Mani Sharma, Hamsalekha and many others. She sang all the songs of Lata Mangeshkar and Shamshad Begum in the movie Anarkali (the Tamil dubbed version of the Hindi movie Mughal-e-Azam) and she was praised by the Bollywood music director Naushad Ali. And also in one interview she was asked what was the best moment in your life time? Is that during the National award session, asked by the Interviewer Setu. But nobody expected that she would say not that, but she said that she got appreciations by the legend Noushad ali ji (Hindi music composer) for the songs sung in Anarkali (dubbed version of Mughal-e-azam).

Death

Swarnalatha died at a private hospital in Chennai at the age of 37 due to cardiac arrest followed by interstitial lung disease (lung infection) after being admitted because she had difficulty in breathing. The singer had been undergoing treatment for lung infection for over a year and had not recorded for films during the period of infection.