Rekha's parents were not married and her father Gemini Ganesan refused to acknowledge her. On her part, Rekha kept her identity secret and revealed her origins and the story of her father's neglect much later in her career. She was famously estranged from her father after she made it big and ignored his attempts at reconciliation.
Gemini Ganesan already had four daughters with his first wife, Alamelu. He had a second daughter with Pushpavalli, and another daughter and a son with second wife Savitri. Rekha has one sister, five half-sisters and a half-brother.
Rekha's career graph showed a dip at the dawn of the 90s and she started losing lead roles to younger actresses. Once again, she put her talent for reinvention to good use with roles in Mira Nair's Kama Sutra: A Tale Of Love (1996) and the commercially successful Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996) opposite Akshay Kumar. In the latter, she played the role of a gangster (which won her another award) and earned her the nickname 'Madam X'.
In 2001, she played the role of Ramdulari, a simple village woman, in Rajkumar Santoshi's Lajja, based on the plight of women in rural India.
In that same year she played the senior wife to Manoj Bajpayee in another Shyam Benegal movie Zubeidaa. The films also featured actress Karisma Kapoor as the Manoj Bajpayee's second wife.
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