Background
Ponnamma was born as one of five children of Malethu Kesava Pillai and Parukutty Amma in Aranmula, Pathanamthitta, Travancore.
Ponnamma was born as one of five children of Malethu Kesava Pillai and Parukutty Amma in Aranmula, Pathanamthitta, Travancore.
She was widely described as a mother figure in Malayalam cinema. She has four siblings, Ramakrishna Pilla, Pankiyamma, Bhaskara Pilla, Thankamma. She started her career at the age of 12 as a Carnatic music vocalist.
At the age of 15, she was appointed as a music teacher in a primary school in Pala, before starting to teach in the senior classes.
Later she joined the first batch of students at the Swati Tirunal Music Academy. Ponnamma"s acting debut happened at the age of 29, in a play titled Bhagyalakshmi.
She went on to act in plays such as Prasanna, Chechi, Jeevithayathra and Rakthabandham, before debuting in films. Her debut role was that of the mother of the character played by Mission Kumari, a prominent actress at that time, in Sasidharan (1950).
The same year she did another role as a mother in the Thikkurissy Sukumaran Nair starrer Amma, which was the first film of noted producer T. East. Vasudevan and also the 18th Malayalam film.
In 1968, she acted in the film Viruthan Shanku directed by P. Venu, the first full-length comedy in Malayalam cinema. She was typecasted in mother roles. In her own words: "I did play a negative role in Paadunna Puzha and that of a wayward woman in Yachakan.
But after that I was always cast as the mother.
As the mother of two children, I was very comfortable in that role. She appeared last in the film Gourisankaram (2004).
She died on 21 February 2011, aged 96, at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.