Her father B. C. Gowrishankar was a cinematographer and mother Mamatha Rao, an actress, both of whom worked in Kannada films.

Apart from Puneeth Rajkumar, she formed a successful pair with all the top Kannada heroes of the time - Upendra, Sudeep, Darshan and Aditya.

She has also acted with big time heroes such as Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna Akkineni, Mahesh Babu, Jr NTR, Jagapathi Babu, Vishnuvardhan, V. Ravichandran, Shivarajkumar, Vijay, Ravi Teja, and Silambarasan After her marriage to director Prem, she cut down on her acting assignments and took over film-making.

She turned producer for the prestigious Jogayya directed by Prem, starring Shivarajkumar in the lead (100th movie).

[4] Following this, she became subject to media and public ridicule, and was called a "party-hopper", having changed 3 political parties in two years.