Born in a district headquarters town called Anantapur and bred, educated for a better part of her life in this city of pearls, she went to the land of opportunity - the US of A, to pursue her Master’s in Computer Sciences.
Along the way, she also decided to follow up on her passion - acting and enrolled herself at the Lee Strassberg Theatre & Film Institute, New York. The acting bug actually bit her quite early in life, although she does not remember when, exactly. From the age of four, she has learnt Bharatanatyam and then down the line, she also got trained in Kathak. That’s Pragathi Yadhati for you, a true-bred Telugu girl.
Once she graduated in engineering from a college here she enrolled for her Masters in Computer Sciences in USA where she also signed up for acting programmes. From then on, life has been one helluva roller-coaster for her -- with her days full, of either rehearsing for plays at Times Square or shooting for some film or the other, including short films.
While Pragathi is all charged up and excited at the prospect of doing Indian films per se, she has done two Bollywood films - ‘Iradhe Maum Ke’ and ‘Ooops… A Desi’ and currently a film titled ‘The Ring Around The Rose’. These apart, she has over a dozen short films in different languages to her credit. As far as Broadway is concerned, she is known as a very, very expressive theatre artiste.
That’s not all. She has formally learnt how to play the violin and spends time to pen scripts. She claims to have several scripts that can straightaway be transformed for the celluloid film, but she’s biding her time, waiting for her turn. The bundle of confidence that she is, she says she has all the time, to showcase her mettle to the world.
Telugu and Tamil filmmakers on visits to America have been in touch with her and expressed their interest to cast her in their projects. Prominent among them are ace director Manirathnam, who has suggested that she spend a while in India and currently that is what Pragathi Yadhati is figuring out how!
