9. Silk Smitha: Vijayalakshmi Vadlapati, better known by her stage name Silk Smitha, rose to fame after her role as ‘Silk’ in the 1979 Tamil film ‘Vandichakkaram’. She became the most sought-after erotic actress of the 1980s and appeared in over 450 films in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi languages. On 23 September 1996, she was found dead in her apartment in Chennai, apparently having committed suicide. by Sakshma Srivastav