Keerthy Suresh (born 17 October 1992) is an Indian actress who works in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films and, since 2024, in Hindi. The daughter of a Malayalam film producer and an actress, she became a leading lady in three industries within a few years of her debut and won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the actress Savitri in the Telugu film Mahanati (2018).
Quick Facts
| Full name | Keerthy Suresh |
| Born | 17 October 1992, Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
| Age | 34 |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 2000–2002 (child); 2013–present |
| Known for | Rajinimurugan, Nenu Sailaja, Mahanati, Sarkar, Saani Kaayidham, Dasara, Maamannan |
| Education | Pearl Academy, Chennai (fashion design) |
| Parents | G. Suresh Kumar and Menaka |
| Spouse | Antony Thattil (m. 2024) |
| Awards | National Film Award for Best Actress (2018) |
Early Life
Keerthy is the younger daughter of G. Suresh Kumar, a Malayalam film producer, and Menaka, a popular actress of the 1980s. She spent her early childhood in Chennai and her school years in Thiruvananthapuram, and acted as a child in a few of her father’s films and in television serials. She was a competitive swimmer at school. She returned to Chennai to study fashion design at Pearl Academy and spent a term on exchange in Scotland and an internship in London, intending a career as a designer.
Career
Debut
The director Priyadarshan launched her as a heroine in the Malayalam horror film Geethaanjali (2013), in a double role, while she was still a student. Ring Master followed. She moved to Tamil with Idhu Enna Maayam (2015) and found success with Rajinimurugan and Remo (2016), both with Sivakarthikeyan, and in Telugu with Nenu Sailaja. She was soon cast opposite the biggest stars, including Vijay in Bairavaa and Sarkar.
Mahanati
Nag Ashwin’s Mahanati (2018) told the life of Savitri, the greatest star of Telugu and Tamil cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, from her childhood through her fame, her marriage to Gemini Ganesan, played by Dulquer Salmaan, and her decline into alcoholism and poverty. Keerthy, then twenty-five, played her across three decades. The film was a critical and commercial success, and she won the National Film Award for Best Actress.
Later work
She took the lead in a series of films built around women, among them Penguin, Miss India and Good Luck Sakhi, with mixed results, and was praised for the brutal revenge drama Saani Kaayidham (2022). She returned to large productions with Sarkaru Vaari Paata, opposite Mahesh Babu, Dasara (2023), as a village schoolteacher in the Telangana coal belt, and Maamannan. The comedy Raghu Thatha (2024) cast her as a bank clerk campaigning against the imposition of Hindi.
She made her Hindi debut in Baby John (2024) with Varun Dhawan. Revolver Rita followed in 2025, and in 2026 she appeared in the courtroom drama Sathyavan Savithiri and in the title role of Karthik Subbaraj’s Dorothy, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Personal Life
On 12 December 2024 she married Antony Thattil, a businessman from Kochi whom she had known since her school days, in Goa. Her elder sister, Revathy, has worked in visual effects and as a director’s assistant. Keerthy has spoken of her mother, who left films after marriage, as the reason she wanted to act.
Featured image: Keerthy Suresh at the pre-release event for Bhola Shankar, August 2023. Photo by Verghese T. K., licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
