Malashree (born Sridurga Pandey) is an Indian actress who works predominantly in Kannada cinema besides also having sporadically appeared in Telugu and Tamil language films.
[7] She won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress in 1991 for her performance as a young woman inflicted with an incurable heart disease in the movie Hrudaya Haadithu.
[10] She shot to fame with Nanjundi Kalyana in 1989 but her personal life hit an all-time low the same year when her step mother and grandmother died in a road accident.
[13] In a talk show, Majaa Talkies, she said that as a child, she was a fan of actor Amitabh Bachchan and would dress up like him, which prompted directors to cast her as a boy, in 1979 films like Imayam and Neela Malargal.
In 1990 Malashri took on the famous double role in Rani Maharani (immortalized by Sridevi in ChaalBaaz) and won a huge fan following with her powerhouse performance.
Her next film Hrudaya Haadithu where she played a young woman inflicted with a heart problem won her acclaim from the masses and critics alike as well as the Filmfare Best Actress award for 1991.
In the later part of the 90s, Malashri had a string of less successful films like Prema Khaidi, Snehada Kadalalli, Megha Mandara, Arishina Kumkuma, and Solillada Saradara.
She took brief hiatus after marriage and made a comeback in the new millennium with "angry woman" roles in Chamundi (2000), Durgi (2004), Kannadada Kiran Bedi (2009), Shakti (2012), Veera (2013) and Ganga (2015).