Wikipedia
Padmini in Sanskrit means "She who sits on the lotus", so literally it refers to Hindu Goddess Lakshmi. It may also refer to:
- Rani Padmini of Chittor (died 1303)
- Padmini (actress) (1932–2006), Indian actress and trained Bharathanatyam dancer who acted in over 250 Indian movies
- Kutty Padmini (born 1956), former child actor who acts mainly in Tamil cinema
- Padmini Kolhapure a Hindi actress during the 1980s (born 1965)
- Padmini Chettur (born 1970), contemporary Indian dancer trained by Chandralekha
- T. K. Padmini (1940–1969), painter from Kerala
- Premier Padmini was an automobile manufactured in India
- Padmini Rout (born 1994), chess prodigy from Orissa, India
Padmini (12 June 1932 – 24 September 2006) was an Indian actress and trained Bharathanatyam dancer, who acted in over 250 Indian films. She acted in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi language films. Padmini, with her elder sister Lalitha and her younger sister Ragini, were called the " Travancore sisters".
Padmini was born and raised in Thiruvananthapuram in what was then the princely state of Travancore (now the Indian state of Kerala). She was the second daughter of SreeThankappan Pillai and Saraswathi Amma both comes from noble Nair families. Her sisters, Lalitha and Ragini, were also well known film actresses. Together, the three were known as the Travancore sisters. Padmini and her sisters learnt bharathanatyam from Thiruvidaimarudur Mahalingam Pillai. The trio were the disciples of Indian dancer Guru Gopinath. They learnt Kathakali and Kerala Natanam styles of dancing from him. N.S. Krishnan noticed her talents while she was presenting Parijatha Pushpapaharanam in Thiruvananthapuram. After that performance, he said that in the future she would become an actress. She was thus cast as heroine in his own production Manamagal. The Travancore Sisters grew up in a joint family tharavadu 'Malaya Cottage' in Poojappura, Trivandrum. The matriarchial head of the family was Karthiyayini Amma whose husband was PK Pillai (Palakunnathu Krishna Pillai of Cherthala) alias 'Penang Padmanabha Pillai'. PK Pillai had six sons of whom Satyapalan Nair (Baby) was a leading producer of many early Malayalam films. Another son, Raveendran Nair's daughter Latika Suresh, is a leading producer of Malayalam TV programs. They performed at the 1955 Filmfare Awards.