Andrea Jeremiah

Andrea Jeremiah (born 21 December 1985) is an Indian actress, playback singer, musician and dancer. She works predominantly in the Tamil and Malayalam film industries. Beginning her career as a playback singer, Andrea has gone on to appear in films, mostly in the Tamil language.

Jeremiah was born in an Anglo-Indian Roman Catholic family in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu. Her father is a lawyer at the High Court in Chennai. She has one younger sister who lives and works at Leuven, Belgium as a research assistant. She was raised near Chennai and went to Sacred Heart Matriculation Higher Secondary School and graduated from Women's Christian College. She said that she was quite a geek and wanted to be a psychiatrist until she completed her 12th board exams.

Jeremiah learnt classical piano when she was age of eight. At the age of 10, Andrea was a part of a Jackson Five-style troupe called Young Stars which formed the base of her early singing and music composing career. She was also a theatre artist in her college and appeared in several stage plays organised by The Madras Players and EVAM. She also organised a company The Show Must Go On (TSMGO Productions) to promote live art and artistes. Andrea said that as a college student, she had turned down every film offer she got as she had no intention of becoming a film actor.

Andrea Jeremiah performing at Sangarsh a concert for a cause (2009)

Acting

She began her theatre career with Girish Karnad's Nagamandala. She has performed all over India. After rendering a song in Gautham Menon's Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu, he asked her to play a lead female character in his next venture Pachaikili Muthucharam. Pachaikili Muthucharam was a film adaptation of James Siegel's novel Derailed, with Andrea portraying Kalyani, a homemaker, whose husband engages in an affair and is blackmailed. Jeremiah was selected for the role after actresses Simran, Shobana and Tabu were approached.

She signed for Selvaraghavan's fantasy-adventure film Aayirathil Oruvan, which released in early 2010. In 2011, she agreed to play a minor supporting role in Venkat Prabhu's multi-starrer Mankatha, which was released in August 2011. In 2013, she made her debut in Malayalam cinema with Rajeev Ravi's romance film Annayum Rasoolum. She has rated this film as the best in her career. She played a role in Kamal Haasan's Vishwaroopam and will reprise the role in its sequel, which is to release in 2015.

Andrea Jeremiah at the IIFA Rocks fashion show

Andrea has completed filming for Puthiya Thiruppangal, in which she plays a journalist, Endrendrum Punnagai, in which she plays a model, and the Malayalam film London Bridge. She has signed director Ram's Taramani.

In 2015, Andrea was cast alongside Mohanlal in Loham, directed by Ranjith. This would be her third Malayalam film, and first with Mohanlal.

Singing

Andrea has stated that her focus was always on music and that she chose to be a professional singer and that acting happened by chance. In 2005, she ventured into playback singing in feature films. She has sung several popular songs for composers Harris Jayaraj, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Devi Sri Prasad and G. V. Prakash Kumarand has also received nominations at Filmfare and Vijay Awards for few of them. She considers the song "Maalai Neram" as the most challenging she has sung.

Composing

Apart from singing under other composers' direction, Andrea Jeremiah also produces her own music. She composed, wrote and sung a single, titled "Soul of Taramani", as a promo for her Tamil romantic-drama Taramani. She has composed several music themes, songs and albums.

The actress was linked to photographer-actor Sunder Ramu in early 2012, before she made an announcement that the pair had been close friends for close to a decade. Andrea Jeremiah confirmed that she had been in a relationship with composer Anirudh Ravichander, after private photos had been leaked in August 2013. She has claimed that she is not bothered about the leaked photos and that she was not ashamed of it, as she shared a good relationship with him. Andrea later admitted to media that the images were a year old and the pair had ended their low-key relationship the previous year. After the release of Annayum Rasoolum (2013), the lead actor Fahadh Faasil openly declared to the media that he was in love with the actress. Andrea rejected reports that the pair were seeing each other and then criticized the move by Fahadh, and has since turned down opportunities to work with the actor again.