Kaviyoor Ponnamma is the evergreen mother of Malayalam cinema. Ever since she was just 22, she had been portraying effectively the mother role in Malayalam movies. Even after 55 years of her contribution in silver screen, she continues to play the “evergreen amma” character. Her first offer was in Thommante Makkal (1965) where she played mother to Sathyan and Madhu. After this role, the industry had heaped so much praise on her performance and there was no looking back at all. For her wealth of experience in the industry, she only gets love and acceptance from the viewers. That is why she finds playing mother role in cinema as honor. Actually, she wanted to become a singer in cinema, but her dream did not become true. While she sang songs for the dramas that were staged in Kerala, she could not get such film offers. She performed on stage when she was just 14 years old. Hence, she is always thankful to the theaters which taught her basic in acting.
She has acted in over 1,000 films, and has won many state awards for her best supporting role in cinema (in the year 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974). She recalls very often that during her time, acting was taken up very seriously and it was just means of livelihood. But the present generation finds acting as passion and pastime job only. While there was some opposition from her mother in taking up acting as her career, it was her father who had supported her fully when she was a stage artiste performer in Kerala. It was just two years before that she had settled in Aluva after shifting from Chennai. In Chennai, she had stayed for 38 years. She also acted as grandmother and mother and appeared in some advertisement. Kaviyoor Ponnamma had acted in the mother role for the actors like Satyan and
Prem Nazir
. But people recognized her when she did the mother role for actor Mohanlal.