Shobana Chandrakumar Pillai, better known mononymously as Shobana, is an Indian film actress and bharatanatyam dancer. She has acted nearly 230 films, predominantly in Malayalam language, in addition to Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and English language films. She has won two National Film Awards, one Kerala State Film Awards and numerous other awards.

 

Shobana established herself as a leading actress in 1980s and 1990s. She has worked with directors such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, K. Balachander, AM Fazil, Mani Ratnam, Bharathan, Uppalapati Narayana Rao, and Priyadarshan. She won the National Film Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances in the Malayalam film Manichitrathazhu (1993) and the English film Mitr, My Friend (2001). Consequent to the year 1999, Shobana turned extremely selective about her films.

 

Shobana was trained under the Bharata Natyam dancers Chitra Visweswaran and Padma Subrahmanyam. She emerged as an independent performer and choreographer in her twenties and currently runs a dance school, Kalarpana, in Chennai.