Sridevi was so famous that most of India was on a first-name basis with her. Acclaimed for her versatility as an actor, Sridevi was best known for her comedic song hawa hawaaii in the film Mr. India (1987), and received critical attention for her role in Sadma (1983) as a child-woman suffering from retrograde amnesia. She featured in more than 300 films, and starred in Tamil and other regional language films before breaking into Hindi cinema or Bollywood. Sridevi returned to films after a fifteen-year break in 2012 with English Vinglish, about an immigrant homemaker in New York, who finds new confidence when she decides to enroll in English language classes.
Born Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan, Sridevi was Mrs. Sridevi Kapoor when she died, having married actor Boney Kapoor in 1996. She is survived by her husband and two daughters, Janhvi and Khushi. It is rumored that her first marriage to Bollywood film star Mithun Chakravarti ended in 1988.
In 2013, Sridevi Kapoor received a Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award.
News sources including Indian Express originally stated that Sridevi died of cardiac arrest on a visit to Dubai on February 24, 2018. On February 26, 2018, the Guardian reported that Sridevi’s death was caused by drowning in her bath under the influence of alcohol, based on a post-mortem by Dubai police.
Fans reacted to the news of her death with shock and dismay.