South Indian Stars Who Married Their Co-Stars — and the Films Where It Started

Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna. Parasuram's 2018 romantic comedy was a sleeper that turned into one of the biggest Telugu hits of its year, and it introduced the pairing that dominated south Indian gossip for the next seven years. They followed it with Dear Comrade in 2019, confirmed nothing until a Maldives holiday in January 2023 made it impossible, and married in Udaipur on 26 February 2026 under the fan-coined banner 'The Wedding of VIROSH'. Streaming on JioHotstar and Zee5.

Suriya and Jyothika. Gautham Vasudev Menon's 2003 cop thriller is the best film either of them has made and the one that turned Suriya into a lead — and the marriage in it, between an encounter specialist and the woman he cannot keep safe, is played by two people who married three years later, in September 2006. Six films in total, ending with Sillunu Oru Kaadhal. Jyothika then left acting for over a decade and came back in her forties to a second career of considerably better roles.

Nagarjuna Akkineni and Amala. Ram Gopal Varma's 1989 debut is a landmark of Telugu cinema on its own terms — the film that rewired how the industry shot violence — and it paired Nagarjuna with Amala, a Bharatanatyam-trained dancer from Chennai who spoke no Telugu. They worked together repeatedly, including Nirnayam, and married in June 1992. She largely left films for animal welfare work; he is still headlining. Their son Naga Chaitanya is a lead actor, which makes this the only three-generation entry on the list.

Fahadh Faasil and Nazriya Nazim. Anjali Menon's 2014 ensemble is one of the most-loved Malayalam films of the decade and it is where these two met — he plays the withdrawn husband, she the cousin who ends up in radio. They married in August 2014, months after it released, and Nazriya stopped working for years. Their reunion is the more interesting film: Anwar Rasheed's Trance in 2020, where she plays a very different kind of part opposite him. Both are on Indian streaming.

Mahesh Babu and Namrata Shirodkar. B. Gopal's 2000 film is not remembered for much except this: it is where the biggest Telugu star of his generation met the Miss India who was then a working Hindi-film actress. They married in 2005, and Namrata has not acted since — she runs his business affairs instead, which in the current Telugu economy is the larger job. Their son Gautam is being lined up for a debut, and the industry has been discussing it for years already.

Yash and Radhika Pandit. They met in 2004 on the Kannada serial Nanda Gokula, not on a film — this 2008 Shashank drama, in which she is the lead and he is not, is simply their best-known shared credit. Drama, Googly and Mr. and Mrs. Ramachari followed. They married in December 2016, two years before KGF: Chapter 1 turned Yash into a pan-India name, which means Radhika Pandit is one of the very few people on this list who was the bigger star when the couple got together.

Arya and Sayyeshaa. The order here is reversed from most of the list: they met while shooting Kaappaan and Ghajinikanth, married in March 2019 in Hyderabad, and only then led a film together — this 2021 Tamil science-fiction comedy about a man and a talking teddy bear, which is exactly as odd as it sounds. Sayyeshaa is Saira Banu's grand-niece, making this the entry with the deepest Hindi-cinema lineage.

Suriya and Jyothika again, at the beginning — this 1999 Vasanth romance is the first film they made together, four years before Kaakha Kaakha and seven before the wedding. It is included because it is the more honest artefact of the two: a straightforward Tamil romance made by two young actors nobody had decided about yet, with none of the weight the later films carry.

Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna, second time out. Bharat Kamma's 2019 film is the more ambitious of their two — a student-union leader and a state cricketer, and a story that is really about anger and abuse rather than romance. It divided audiences on release and has been substantially re-evaluated since, largely because Rashmika's performance is the strongest thing in it. Worth watching back now that the couple it produced has a wedding date attached to it.