Penning my thoughts – On actresses moving across south film industries

I have been thinking for a long period of time on why does actresses move from one film industry to another. Importantly, this article is largely about actresses from Tamil film industry moving to Telugu film industry. I always had the misconceptions that

• Actresses from Tamil films move to Telugu film industry (Tollywood) because they are offered more money to act in Telugu films.
• And Tollywood in bargain, makes these actresses shed their dresses (that is expose more). And Tamil/Hindi industry loses these actresses to Tollywood (sometimes forever).

While, there had been few cases of reverse, wherein actresses have moved from Telugu to Tamil industry (Kollywood), they are far and few, in comparisons to actresses who have moved to Tollywood.

But, I seem to be completely wrong on this count. In fact, Telugu film industry seems to be offering scope & good scripts to these actresses, which makes these actresses choose to do films in that industry primarily for sake of creative satisfaction, in spite of having hardships of not knowing language, staying alone in a new environment, food problems… Some of the recent actresses who have moved from Kollywood to Tollywood that come to my mind are:

• Samantha Prabhu
• Trisha Krishnan
• Nayanthara
• Amala Paul
• Anjali
• Priyamani
• Shruti Haasan

 Similarly, there are girls who have moved from Bollywood to Tollywood too and found success:

• Kajal Aggarwal
• Tamannah Bhatia
• Charmme Kaur

If we look back, almost every Tamil actress has acted in Tollywood and have been successful too. Similarly, many top Bollywood actresses too have acted in Tollywood, but in their case, it is largely due to lack of enough opportunities in Bollywood at that point in time of their career, and have moved back to Bollywood, once their career kicks off in hindi films.

And Andhra people have accepted these actresses with open arms, even when they know very well that, these actresses are also taking away the position/job from Telugu native girls. Additionally, this situation is helping economy of film business, that of helping films that has these actresses release in both states (through dubbing or sometimes having a different hero in other language), and of course there are various other factors too, that of director/hero having market in both industry etc. Some films that have been dubbed/simultaneously shot in multiple languages are listed below:

• Vishwaroopam in Tamil / Viswaroopam in Telugu
• 3 in Tamil / 3 in Telugu
• Kadal in Tamil / Kadali in Telugu
• Magadheera in Telugu / Maveeran in Tamil
• Arundhati in Telugu / Arundhati in Tamil
• Irandam Ulagam in Tamil / Varna in Telugu
• Rudramadevi in Telugu / Rudramadevi in Tamil
• Oru Kal Oru Kannadi in Tamil / Ok Ok in Telugu
• Muppozhudhum Un Karpanaigal in Tamil / Nirantharam Nee Oohale in Telugu
• Baahubali in Telugu / Baahubali in Tamil
• Neethane En Ponvasantham in Tamil / Yeto Velipoyondi Manasu

Full list of films that are dubbed from Tamil to Telugu and vice versa, are pretty much available in Wikipedia site. We shall talk about actors having acceptances across film industry in another article.