page_title: Asin
section_title: Early work (2001–04)
hierarchical_section_title: Asin / Career / Early work (2001–04)
caption_attribution_description: Asin at The Cast And Crew Of Ghajini Celebrate The Film's 200 Crores Collections Worldwide
context_page_description: Asin Thottumkal, known mononymously as Asin, is a former Indian actress who mostly appeared in Tamil films. She also appeared in lead roles in Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam films. She is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer. She has received three Filmfare Awards. She began her acting career in the South Indian film industry, but later shifted her focus to Bollywood. She speaks eight languages, and dubs her own films. She is the only Malayali actress, other than Padmini, to have dubbed in her own voice for all her films, irrespective of language. Asin has been referred to as the "Queen of Kollywood" by online portals in 2007.
  Making her acting debut with Sathyan Anthikkad's Malayalam film Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka, Asin had her first commercial success with the Telugu film Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi in 2003, and won a Filmfare Best Telugu Actress Award for the film. M. Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi was her debut in Tamil and a huge success. She received her Filmfare Best Tamil Actress Award for her most noted critically acclaimed performance in her third Tamil film, Ghajini.
context_section_description: Asin's first assignment was an advertisement for BPL Mobile. She debuted in the Malayalam film Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka in 2001, at the age of 15. After taking a year out to pursue her education, Asin returned with her breakthrough film as an actress, Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi opposite Ravi Teja, portraying a Tamil girl in her first Telugu language film, which subsequently fetched her the Telugu Filmfare Award for Best Actress. In the same year she won the Santosham Best Actress Award for her performance alongside Akkineni Nagarjuna in her second Telugu film Shivamani. Her following two Telugu films Lakshmi Narasimha and Gharshana, both portrayed Asin as the love interest for police officers and both were successful ventures.
  Asin's first Tamil language film was M. Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi, in which she co-starred with Jayam Ravi. Asin reprised her role from her film Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi for the remake, which saw her portraying a Malayali girl instead of the Tamil girl in the original. The movie subsequently went on to super-hit in Tamil cinema during 2004, introducing Asin to Tamil film industry. After a brief return to Telugu films, to do Chakram, she appeared in Ullam Ketkumae. The film, initially launched in 2002, was supposed to be her debut as a lead heroine, is a college love story, directed by Jeeva, which was long-delayed but eventually became a successful venture at the box office, creating wider opportunities for her and the rest of the cast.
caption: Asin with the cast and crew of Ghajini celebrating the film's worldwide gross of 200 crores
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image ExifOffset": "162", "Image DateTime": "2013:10:29 21:36:20", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "262", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7289", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "[432, 3645769696]", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "[439, 432]"}