Aarthi Agarwal

Biography

Aarthi Agarwal (March 5, 1984 – June 6, 2015) was an Indian-American actress who primarily worked in Telugu cinema.

Agarwal was born on March 5, 1984, in New Jersey to Gujarati parents. Her younger sister Aditi Agarwal is also an actress in the Telugu film industry. At around 14 years of age, actor Suniel Shetty spotted her and invited her to dance on stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After the performance, he asked her father to encourage her to take up acting in Bollywood. At the age of 16, she made her film debut in Paagalpan.

Agarwal made her Telugu film debut in Nuvvu Naaku Nachav with actor Venkatesh. She was one of the few non-Telugu speaking actresses to work with noted Indian film stars Chiranjeevi, Nandamuri Balakrishna, Nagarjuna, Venkatesh, Prabhas, Mahesh Babu, Ravi Teja, and Jr NTR.

She tried venturing into Tamil films also through Winner (2003) and Bambara Kannaley (2005). In Winner's movie, she was cast as the female lead initially. However, due to her unavailability in the second shooting schedule, she was eventually replaced by Kiran Rathod owing to her popularity after Tamil Blockbuster Gemini (2002). She took up popular Telugu remakes of Actress Jyothika's blockbuster Tamil films like Dhool (Veede) and Priyamaana Thozhi (Vasantham).

In 2005, media reported that Agarwal had attempted suicide over the failure of a romantic relationship with a co-star. In 2006, following an accident at home, she was hospitalized with internal head injuries at Apollo Hospital, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, and put on ventilator support.

In 2007, Agarwal married a software engineer; the couple divorced in 2009.