Trisha Krishnan ( born on 4 May 1983) is an Indian film actress and model who mainly appears in Tamil and Telugu films. After her first appearance in the 1999 Tamil film Jodi, in a supporting role, she won a Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her first lead role in the 2002 film Mounam Pesiyadhe.
She later rose to fame starring in the successful films, Saamy (2003) and Ghilli (2004) in Tamil cinema and Varsham (2004) in Telugu cinema, for which she secured her first South Filmfare Best Actress Award. She made her Bollywood debut in the 2010 film Khatta Meetha opposite Akshay Kumar.
Krishnan was born to Tamil parents, Krishnan and Uma Krishnan, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She attended M.S.E.C College in Ramnad and later studied at Sacred Heart Church Park School, Chennai. In school, she participated in several cultural activities, sports and school band. While studying in M.S.E.C college, she ventured into part-time modeling and participated in various beauty pageants.
She converses fluently in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi & English. As part of her modeling career, she appeared in many TV advertisements including that of Fanta, Tata Indicom and Vivel ITC. She also appeared in Falguni Pathak's music video Meri Chunar Ud Ud Jaye as Ayesha Takia's friend dancing in the video.
Soon after her pageant success, Krishnan began her career acting in an uncredited role as Simran's friend in Jodi before moving onto appear in advertisements and in music videos, with Falguni Pathak's Meri Chunar Ud Ud Jaye being the most prominent. The first project she accepted was the Priyadarshan-directed Lesa Lesa, with the promotional posters for the film, also creating an offer to star in the A. R. Rahman musical, Enakku 20 Unakku 18 (2003).
However both the projects' releases were severely delayed, and her first release was Ameer's Mounam Pesiyadhe opposite Surya Sivakumar. The film became a moderate success at the box office and did manage to gain credentials for Trisha, with critics claiming that she was "undoubtedly a refreshing new find, with sparkling eyes and appealing demeanour", also going onto praise the dubbing artiste, Savitha Reddy, who has since regularly dubbed for Trisha. Manasellam, her second project, saw her play a cancer patient; but the film also went unnoticed despite positive reviews for the film and the actress.