Actor Kalpana Ranjani who is popular in the Malayam film industry and is a national award-winning actor is no more. Doctors at a corporate hospital declared her brought dead, on Monday morning and said she had died of a cardiac seizure.
Speaking to The Hindu , the actor’s close friend and associate, Kalavathi said that till 2 a.m. in the morning, they had watched the director Sridhar’s Tamil film ‘Police Kaaran Magal’ starring Muthuraman. “I asked Kalpana to sleep because she had a shooting today, for director Vamsi Paidipally’s ‘Oopiri’. When I got ready at about 6 a.m. and went to wake her up, she did not respond. I then called the hotel reception and we rushed her to hospital,” she said, sobbing.
Kalpana, who is the sister of Urvasi and Kalaranjini, both actors, has thus far acted in about 300 films in South Indian languages, but mainly in Malayalam, debuting in ‘Pokkuveyil’ by G. Aravindan in 1981. Her role in ‘Njaan Thanichalla’ of 2012 got her a national award. She was in Hyderabad for the shooting of ‘Oopiri’ that has among others, actors Nagarjuna and Karthi in the cast. Both of them were said to have rushed to the hospital on hearing the news.
The actor is best remembered in Tamil for her role in K. Bhagyaraj’s ‘Chinna Veedu’ in 1985 and with Kamal Haasan in the film ‘Sathi Leelavathy’ and ‘Pammal K. Sambandam’. She was last seen in the Tamil movie ‘Kakki Sattai’ in which she essayed the role of the mother of Siva Karthikeyan.
