Pooja Hegde, born on 13 October 1990, is an Indian actress who mainly works in Telugu, Hindi and Tamil films. She is one of the highest-paid actresses of South Indian cinema and a recipient of four SIIMA Awards, along with four Filmfare Awards South nominations. She made her debut with the Tamil film Mugamoodi (2012) after taking part in the 2010 Miss Universe India pageant.
She says she was raised in Mumbai in a Tulu-speaking Bunt family from Udupi, Karnataka. Her father, Manjunath Hegde, is a criminal lawyer, and her mother, Latha Hegde, is an immunologist and entrepreneur. Her elder brother, Rishabh Hegde, is an orthopaedic surgeon. Besides Tulu, she speaks English, Hindi, Marathi and Kannada fluently and learned Telugu during her career in Telugu cinema. She considers Bengaluru her hometown. She went to the Maneckji Cooper Education Trust School in Mumbai and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree from M. M. K. College, and she has trained in classical dance and music, including Bharatanatyam.
A Miss India representative met her at a college event and suggested she take part in the pageant. She was eliminated early from Miss India 2009 although she won the Miss India Talented 2009 honour. In 2010 she was runner-up at Femina Miss India South, taking the Miss India South Glamorous Hair title, and later that year second runner-up at Miss Universe India 2010. She turned down several offers from big production banners over three years before debuting in Mugamoodi, at her mother’s suggestion.
The director Mysskin offered her the part after seeing photographs from her pageant win. In the Tamil superhero film Mugamoodi, opposite Jiiva, she played Shakthi. She learned her Tamil dialogue by writing the words in English and noting similarities with her mother tongue, Tulu. The film opened strongly in August 2012, and she earned nominations for the SIIMA Award for Best Female Debut – Tamil and the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut – South.
She moved into Telugu cinema in 2014 with the romantic comedy Oka Laila Kosam opposite Naga Chaitanya, for which she learned Telugu, and then starred opposite Varun Tej in Mukunda, where she has said the song “Gopikamma” was a major breakthrough. In 2016 she made her Hindi debut opposite Hrithik Roshan in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Mohenjo Daro, after Gowariker’s wife, Sunita Gowariker, spotted her in an advertisement.
The action comedy DJ: Duvvada Jagannadham (2017), opposite Allu Arjun, grossed over Rs 1.5 billion, one of the highest-grossing Telugu films of that year. In 2018 she appeared in Aravinda Sametha Veera Raghava, directed by Trivikram Srinivas, which grossed over Rs 1.8 billion worldwide, and dubbed her own lines. In 2019 she was in Maharshi with Mahesh Babu and Gaddalakonda Ganesh with Varun Tej, and returned to Hindi cinema with the ensemble comedy Housefull 4 (2019), a commercial success.
Her later Telugu successes include Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020) and Most Eligible Bachelor (2021). A run of poorly received films followed, after which she found success with Retro (2025). Her career has crossed Tamil, Telugu and Hindi cinema in just over a decade.
Featured image: Pooja Hegde with Suriya and the director Karthik Subbaraj at the Retro audio launch, April 2025 (file photo). Photo by Shiva CK, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
