Chinnari Papala [Naa Thammudu] 🎶

She's quite the moppet, dressed up as Nehru for a school function song in the film, this could well have ended up being her last screen outing.

One of the scenes in Naa Thammudu required Sridevi to come sprinting across a busy street. A young K. Raghavendra Rao, who was assisting his father K. Surya Prakash Rao on the film, was eager to impress. He instructed the child star to come running as soon as he signalled her with his hanky. The location was Madras's Mount Road, and the traffic was heavy. As soon as Sridevi saw the hanky wave, she started right through the street without glancing left or right. Just then a car came close. Fatally close. Without slowing down, it brushed past her, missing by just a fraction of a second. Rao recalls:

'She fell down and lay sprawled. I picked her up in my arms and rushed towards first-aid, both fear and emotion clutching at my heart. I can never forgive myself for that; even days later I would keep getting nightmares of her mother screaming and me getting arrested.'