Nithya Menen

Nithya Menen is an Indian actress and playback singer who works predominantly in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Hindi cinema. She first appeared on screen as a child artist in the French-Indian film *Hanuman* (1998). She made her debut as an adult lead in K. P. Kumaran's Malayalam film *Aakasha Gopuram* (2008) and entered Kannada cinema with *Josh* (2009). Her Telugu breakthrough came with B. V. Nandini Reddy's romantic comedy *Ala Modalaindi* (2011), for which she won the Nandi Award for Best Actress. Menen's film roles include Santosh Sivan's historical film *Urumi* (2011), Anwar Rasheed's *Ustad Hotel* (2012), Vikram K. Kumar's *Ishq* (2012), *Gunde Jaari Gallanthayyinde* (2013), Anjali Menon's ensemble film *Bangalore Days* (2014), Kranthi Madhav's *Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju* (2015), Trivikram Srinivas's *S/O Satyamurthy* (2015), Mani Ratnam's romantic drama *O Kadhal Kanmani* (2015), Vikram K. Kumar's science-fiction thriller *24* (2016), Koratala Siva's *Janatha Garage* (2016), Atlee's *Mersal* (2017), and Prasanth Varma's *Awe!* (2018). She made her Hindi cinema debut as satellite engineer Varsha Pillai in the space drama *Mission Mangal* (2019). She has also sung playback in Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada films. Menen won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance as Shobana in Mithran R. Jawahar's drama *Thiruchitrambalam* (2022), alongside Dhanush. Her television and streaming credits include Amazon Prime Video's psychological thriller series *Breathe: Into the Shadows* (2020–2022), the comedy-drama series *Kumari Srimathi* (2023), and SonyLIV's sitcom *Masterpeace* (2023). Her later film credits include Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi's romantic drama *Kadhalikka Neramillai* (2025), Pandiraj's family drama *Thalaivan Thalaivii* (2025), and Dhanush's directorial film *Idli Kadai* (2025).