It is known news that Veteran actress Jamuna passed away at the age of 86, on January 27th in Hyderabad after a brief illness. She is an actress whose contemporaries were stalwarts like Savithri, SVR, NTR, ANR, Suryakantham and others. Jamuna acted in more than 200 movies in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada as well as Hindi.
She is survived by a son and a daughter. Born into a Telugu family based in Hampi in Karnataka in the year 1936, her family moved to Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district where she completed her primary education and started playing the role of a stage artist during her school days.
Jamuna entered the film industry at the age of 16 with the film Puttillu (1953) directed by Garikapari Rajarao. Her fortunes turned around with L. V. Prasad's Missamma (1955) in which she was in a supporting character co-starring N. T. Rama Rao, Savitri and Akkineni Nageswara Rao.
She had an illustrious career spanning four decades, in which she took up challenging roles and shared screen with most legendary actors of those era. She shared screen space with MGR, Siva Ganeshan and other top actors of Kollywood and also worked in many Kannada films. Jamuna also worked in Hindi films, winning a FilmFare award for the role of a best supporting actress in the film Milan (1967) starring Sunil Dutt and Nutan. The film was the Hindi remake of Telugu super hit Mooga Manasulu (1964) in which she worked with Nageswara Rao and Savitri.
After receiving an invite from the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she joined Congress party and got elected to the Lok Sabha from Rajahmundry in 1989, but she left politics following her defeat in 1991. She briefly worked in the BJP. With her passing away, Tollywood has lost a shining star whose work ethics and dignity is always an inspiration for newcomers. Coming close on the heels of loss of stars like Krishna and Krishnam Raju, Jamuna's demise marks a bad phase for Telugu film industry.
