Riya Sen (born Riya Dev Varma; 24 January 1981) is an Indian film actress and model. Riya, who comes from a family of actors including her grandmother Suchitra Sen, mother Moon Moon Sen and sister Raima Sen, began her acting career in 1991 as a child actress in the film Vishkanya. Her first commercial success in her film career was with Style, a 2001 Hindi low-budget comedy directed by N. Chandra. Some of her other notable films include producer Pritish Nandy's musical film, Jhankaar Beats (2003) in Hinglish,

Riya has, in addition to Hindi films, appeared in Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and English films. Her film career began in the earnest with Tamil films such as Bharathi Raja's Taj Mahal, co-starring Manjoj Bharatiraja in the male lead, and Manoj Bhatnaghar's Good Luck, opposite Prasanth. Both of the films failed commercially, and she had a brief reappearance in Tamil cinema only to perform in a dance number for N. Maharajan's Arasatchi.  Her first English language movie was It Was Raining That Night, a remake of the Bengali film Hei Brishtir Raat, scripted by Sudeshna Roy and directed by Mahesh Manjrekar. In the film, she collaborated with mother Moon Moon Sen. Riya was slated to appear in Anjan Dutt's Bengali-English bilingual film The Bong Connection with her sister, but she was eventually dropped from the project and replaced by Peeya Rai Chaudhary. The two sisters were later cast together in director Ajai Sinha's The Bachelor, a Bengali film that, as of 2008, is yet to be finished.  Her most successful non-Hindi film has been director Santhosh Sivan's Ananthabhadram (2005). The first Malayalam venture for both Riya and Sivan, was both a critical and commercial success. It won five Kerala State Film Awards and surfaced as one of the biggest Malayalam successes that year. She played the role of Bhama in the film, a village girl who is lured by Digambaran, the evil magician portrayed by Manoj K. Jayan. In a song-and-dance sequence showing Digambaran turning Bhama into a medium for demonic rituals, the choreographer Aparna Sindoor made abundant use Kathakali movements. The use of Kathakali has been a high point in the resurgence of the classical dance form in other major Indian films as well, including Shaji Karun's Vanaprastham (1999) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair (2005). She made her Telugu Debut with Nenu Meeku Telusa...?, in which she was paired opposite Manoj Manchu.  In 2012 Sen won the Star Guide Award as best actress for her performance in Noukadubi.

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