Yesteryear actress Radha’s daughter, Karthika, who won commercial and critical acclaim with her debut film Ko, was recently in the city to walk the ramp.
But the question on everyone’s mind was — why has she not been able to bag any big films? Despite her debut film with K V Anand striking gold at the box office here, the actress has not been able to make in-roads in K-Town.

Karthika was signed on for Sundar C’s Madha Gaja Raja with Vishal but once the script changed from a single heroine to a multi-heroine project, the actress and director mutually decided to part ways. The actress had also signed S A Chandrasekar’s film, Sattam Oru Iruttarai, but for some reason she decided to opt out of that project too. Currently, she’s only working in Bharathiraja’s Annakodiyum Kodiveeranum which recently was ‘split’, with the director deciding to shoot a separate film with one of the film’s two tracks. Her younger sister, Tulasi, meanwhile, managed to bag a Mani Ratnam project — Kadal.

As far as Mollywood goes, Karthika has two films on hand — Gold and a movie starring Santosh Sivan as painter Raja Ravi Varma. Gold has three heroines and the flick is said to be in limbo as of now. Her movie with Santosh Sivan, where she shares screenspace with Nithya Menen, is being screened at national and international film festivals. And despite making her debut with Naga Chaitanya in Telugu in Josh, the actress’s career in Tollywood has not taken off. Her last release, Dammu, did not bring big filmmakers knocking at her door.

So despite her acting lineage, why are filmmakers not making a beeline for her? Says a Tamil producer on condition of anonymity, “Karthika is quite tall but that’s not really a hindrance as other heroines like Anushka are tall too. But the problem is she lacks on-screen presence unlike them and also really needs to hone her acting skills.” Some others in the industry claim that since most of her films did not do too well at the BO, betting on her would be a tad risky.

Meanwhile, we also hear that she and her mom, Radha, who’s said to be managing her career, are also doing the rounds in Bollywood as they live in Mumbai. But perhaps she should look at conquering one film industry first rather than all at the same time?