Padmavati Rao is a veteran Indian film actress who is also a writer, theatre personality, poet, dancer and translator. She is known for her work in the Hindi and Kannada film industries. She has also been involved in theatre throughout her career.
Wiki/Biography
Padmavati Rao was born in Delhi in 1963 (58 years old in 2021). She is also known as Akshatha Rao and Pinty Rao.
appearance
Height (approximate): 5′ 5″
Eye color: light brown
Hair color: gray and white
Family and caste
There is not much information about her family. She has an elder sister, Arundathi Nag, who is an Indian film and theatre actress.
Padmavati Rao and her sister Arundathi Nag
Profession
Movie
She made her acting debut in the Kannada film Geetha (1981) in which she played the role of ‘Geetha’.
Padmavati Rao’s Kannada debut film Geetha
She made her Bollywood debut with the film Pardes (1997), in which she played the role of ‘Narmada’, alongside Shah Rukh Khan and Mahima Chaudhary.
Padmavati’s Hindi debut film Pardes
Her Marathi film debut was Film Ek Sangaychay (2018).
Padmavati Rao’s Marathi debut Ek Sangaychay
She has also acted in Malayalam and English dramas. After acting in films in multiple languages, Padmavati starred in many hit films like TE3N (2016), in which she played the role of “Nancy”, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat (2018), in which she played the role of “Kunwar Bhaisa”, Tanaji (2020), in which she played the role of Rajmata Jijao, and Rat Akeli Hai (2020), in which she played the role of Pramila Singh; these films made her even more popular.
Padmavati Rao starred opposite Amitabh Bachchan in the film TE3N
Facts/Trivia
- Padmavati Rao translated five plays of Girish Karnad and 30 Days of September by Mahesh Dattani into Hindi.
- Though she has acted in many plays, she received great acclaim for her one-woman show based on Dhiruben Patel’s work “Kitchen Poems” and she considers this performance as the biggest achievement of her career.
- When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the world into crisis, Padmavati Rao took up the initiative towards the farming community. She focused on the villages outside Bengaluru where she promoted natural farming methods and handicrafts as she had long been keen to serve the farming community. She contributed to the farmers by building a non-electric and cost-effective refrigerator herself using cheap building materials. In an interview, she was quoted as saying:
I have long wanted to serve farmers. To that end, I invented an affordable refrigerator that does not require electricity.”
- According to her, she aspired to take up farming since she was 23 years old; moreover, she had been very concerned about the issue of farmer suicides in India for a long time. This motivated her to invent a cost-effective refrigerator that would help farmers keep their vegetables fresh when they could not sell them. The idea of making a cost-effective refrigerator came to her when the courtyard wall of her house got damaged and she wanted to use the bricks of the damaged wall for constructive purposes; this motivated her to make a non-electric and cost-effective refrigerator. Despite having cement and sand, she used sack material, an old flat cardboard box as a sliding door, an old wire rack and a river grass mat (Chape). To test the results, she placed oranges, tomatoes and milk in the refrigerator. Oranges can be kept for 28 days, tomatoes can be kept for 15 days, and milk can be kept for a week after being boiled once a day. She also tested the refrigerator in midsummer. When she watered the sack material three times a day, the oranges and tomatoes showed no signs of dehydration or rotting. Cooked food that was kept after dinner was fine for lunch the next day, and vegetables could be kept for about two to three days. Her invention deserves praise.
Non-Refrigerator of Padmavati
- Besides farming, Padmavati has many other interests like sewing, mending, upcycling and writing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also devoted time to writing. She is writing three books at the same time – the first is about her mother’s recipes, the second is a collection of poems titled Love and Silence, and the third is a play.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education