Disco Shanti is an actor in Indian cinema, but known as an item girl in South Indian cinema, who was in good demand in Tamil cinema. Tamil cinema had its own stable of item girls in the 80s and 90’s, they were Disco Shanti, Jayamalini and
Silk Smitha
.
South Indian cinema had a major fan following and people Andhra, Kerala and Karnataka used to flock to the theatres to watch their favourite actors gyrate and yoddle on the screen. Now-a-days even actresses perform items numbers in screen, but those were the days, when selected dancers and actors were allowed to perform item numbers. The item is commonly used in connection with Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu cinema. She wanted to become an actress and even was introduced as a heroine in several Tamil movies. But as luck did not favour, she switched off to item number roles.
Well, Disco Shanti was the daughter of Tamil Actor’ Vijayapuri Veeran’ C L Anandan. She also had a younger sister who was an actress
Lalitha Kumari
and acted in few films. Disco Shanti got married to a Telegu actor
Sri Hari
in 1996 and bid bye to films.
Disco Shanti was popular for her catchy, upbeat and often sexually provocative dances for a song in a movie. She worked in several Hindi movies apart from appearing in movies made in other south Indian languages. She has done many sizzling numbers in Indian screen and she was a competition to Silk Smitha and Jothi Laxmi. Disco Shanthi paired with almost leading heroes of Tamil Cinema in 90s.
She was famous for her disco moves in dance numbers when disco dances were highly popular. She has over fifty movies to her credit and has done even films with big Bollywood stars such as
Hema Malini
,
Sunny Deol
and thespian
Dilip Kumar
even.
Even though she has remained away from limelight it is heard that her son will be making a debut in cinemas soon.