Radha was born as Rajalakshmi in 1948 into a farming family. Interested in becoming an actress, she quit school to enter cinema. Her debut role came in the 1964 Kannada film Navakoti Narayana, in which Rajkumar played the lead role. Her most notable role in Tamil films was Thazampoo in 1966. She would then go on to act alongside other top actors in the south Indian cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, such as M.G. Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, N. T. Rama Rao, Gemini Ganesan, Akkineni Nageswara Rao and Jaishankar.
