Actress Aranmula Ponnamma

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Aranmula Ponnamma is a Malayalam film actress and  is widely described as a mother figure in Malayalam cinema.

Aranumala ponnamma was born as one of five children of Malethu Kesava Pillai and Parukutty Amma in Aranmula, Pathanamthitta, Travancore. She started her career at the age of 12 as a Carnatic music vocalist. At the age of 15, she was appointed as a music teacher in a primary school in Pala, before starting to teach in the senior classes. Later she joined the first batch of students at the Swati Tirunal Music Academy.

Ponnamma's acting debut happened only when she became 29, in a play titled Bhagyalakshmi opposite Augustine Joseph, father of renowned singer K.J. Yesudas. She went on to act in some more popular plays, before debuting in films. She debut role was that of the mother of the character played by Miss Kumari, a prominemt actress at that time in Sasidharan(1950).The same year she did another mother role in the Thikkurissy Sukumaran Nair starrer Amma, which was the first film of noted producer T.E. Vasudevan .She soon got typecasted in mother roles. In her own words: "I did play a negative role in Paadunna Puzha and that of a wayward woman in Yachakan. But after that I was always cast as the mother. As the mother of two children, I was very comfortable in that role. In her career spanning over 60 years, she acted as the mother or grandmother of first generation actors like Thikkurissy Sukumaran Nair, second generation actors like Prem Nazir and Sathyan and third generation actors like Mohanlal and Suresh Gopi, who happens to be the husband of her granddaughter.

Ponnamma received the State and National awards for best supporting actress for her performance in Kathapurushan(1995), directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. She was awarded the J.C. Daniel Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006

She died on 21st February 2011 at the age of 97

( Courtesy: Wikkipedia )