In the hit 1975 film Julie, Sridevi played the heroine's younger sister. Solva Sawan, which co-starred Amol Palekar and flopped at the box office, was not Sridevi's first Hindi outing.Sridevi continued to appear in Tamil and Telugu cinema well into the Eighties, after becoming a Bollywood superstar. By the time Sridevi made her Bollywood debut as a leading lady in 1979's Solva Sawan, she was a name to reckon with down South. In 1976, 13-year-old Sridevi scored her first role as leading lady in Moondru Mudichu, opposite two men who would become Tamil cinema's biggest stars - Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. Her performance in 1971's Poombatta won her the Kerala State Film Award for Best Child Artist. Little Sridevi, who was born into a lawyer's family in Sivakasi, then appeared in a number of Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam movies. It all started with 1967's Kandan Karunai in which a four-year old Sridevi starred in Kandhan Karunai opposite Tamil great Sivaji Ganesan.
15 years away from the arc-lights have not dimmed Sridevi's talent or her star quality and now, at 50, she is a bona fide star once again, a feat last achieved by a 58-year-old Amitabh Bachchan whose career was resurrected by Mohabbatein in 2000. Last year, Sridevi changed that by starring as a decidedly middle-aged homemaker, low on glamour and grammar, in English Vinglish. In a film industry of heroes who don't age beyond 30 and heroines beyond 25, comebacks are hard to pull off, especially if you are female and have crossed into the twilight zone of 40 plus.