Madras, Tamil Nadu, India | 1920-07-25 | 2007-07-21

Sundaram Jayalakshmi (25 July 1920 - 21 July 2007) was a Tamil film actress and singer who played lead parts in movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Starting her film career with Seetha Kalyanam in 1934, she acted in about a dozen movies, her most remembered role being in the 1943 movie Sivakavi. She is the sister of musicians S. Rajam and S. Balachander. Jayalakshmi was born on 25 July 1920 in Madras to lawyer V. Sundaram Iyer and his wife Parvathi. In 1933, when V. Shantaram wanted to make a Tamil movie and placed an advertisement in Sight and Sound magazine, Sundaram Iyer came forward to help him and as a result the whole family travelled to Kolhapur to make their debut in the movieSeetha Kalyanam with Jayalakshmi as the heroine Seetha and her older brother Rajam as the hero Rama.