Manju Warrier pips Aishwarya Lekshmi, Kalyani Priyadarshan to be most popular Malayalam star of December 2022: Survey

Thunivu and Ayisha star Manju Warrier has emerged as the Most Popular Malayalam Actor (Female) piping Aishwarya Lekshmi, Parvathy Thiruvothu and others, as per a media consulting firm’s survey for December 2022.

Media tracker and consulting firm Ormax published their Malayalam list of Stars India Loves and lady superstar Manju Warrier, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Kalyani Priyadarshan and Rajisha Vijayan occupied the top 5 spots.

Also read: Mohanlal trumps Mammootty, Prithviraj Sukumaran to become most popular Malayalam star of December 2022: Survey 

Manju, who had a mixed year with her OTT release Lalitham Sundaram and theatrical film Jack ‘N Jill, getting negative reviews, still managed to grab some plum projects including Ajith’s Thunivu, which released in theatres this week. The actress had also shot for the first ever Indo-Arab movie titled Ayisha, which is set to release on January 20.

Aishwarya Lekshmi, who had worked in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam this year, had expectedly featured in the top 2. Though her Malayalam outings Archana 31 Not Out and Kumari didn’t create waves at the box office, her Tamil movies Ponniyin Selvan: 1 and Gatta Kushti were clear winners. The actress was also part of the Telugu OTT release Ammu and Arya’s Captain.

Parvathy had the critically-acclaimed Puzhu and Wonder Women – both direct-to-OTT releases – last year. She is also part of Pa Ranjith’s Thangalaan and an upcoming Bollywood movie, featuring Pankaj Tripathi and Sanjana Sanghi.

Kalyani Priyadarshan had a stellar 2022, being part of films such as Bro Daddy, Hridayam and Thallumaala – the latter two being superhits. Rajisha, meanwhile, had starred in the Sony LIV anthology Freedom Fight, Keedam, Malayankunju apart from the Telugu movie Ramarao on Duty and Karthi’s Tamil film Sardar. A surprise exclusion in the list was Darshana Rajendran, who was also part of Hridayam and Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey.

As per Ormax, the list was chosen based on the responses of “regular theatre-going audience who were asked to name their top 2 favourite female actors” from each language. The sample size per language is more than 10,000 people, picked from a diverse group based in metros, mini-metros and small towns.