The 1980s Screen Star Later Found on the Street

Nisha Noor was the talk of the town in the late 1980s. She worked mainly in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu films, and among the titles Asianet Newsable lists are Kalyana Agathigal in 1986, Iyer the Great in 1990 and Tik! Tik! Tik! in 1981. She worked with directors such as Balachandran, Vishu and Chandrashekar, and played opposite the superstars Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan.

Her career was cut short, and she disappeared from the film industry for many years. The article says no one in the industry seemed willing to work with her afterwards, that her finances worsened over the following years, and that she dropped out of sight. It adds that it is unclear why she lost touch with her family and friends, and that she was single.

A long time later she was found sleeping on the streets. The article does not give the city or the exact date. She was gravely weakened and extremely thin.

Members of a Tamil community organisation and political group, took her in and admitted her to a hospital in Tambaram, Chennai. The article says she died there in 2007.

It gives no details about her life in the years between her disappearance and her rescue, and this account adds none. What it does record is how far a woman who had once shared the screen with the biggest stars of Tamil cinema had fallen out of public view.