Having won the Vijay Award for Best Debut Actress for her performance in the 2009 Tamil movie Naadodigal, Ananya is a recognized South Indian movie actress, who is known for her work in Malayalam and Tamil movies. With movies likeKandahar, where she shared screen space with Bollywood stalwart Amitabh Bachchan, to her credit, her films have been commercial as well as critical successes.

Early Life
Ananya was born as Ayilya to movie producer Gopalkrishanan Nair and his wife Praseetha on 29th of March, 1987 in Kochi, Kerala. She has a younger brother, Arjun. Ananya holds a BA degree in Communicative English from St. Xavier`s College, Aluva. While studying, she represented her college in Star Wars, a television reality show, which is when she gained recognition and started receiving movie offers.

Personal Life
Ananya is married to Anjaneyan who is a businessman from Trichur since 2012. It was rumored that the engagement was called off by Ananya`s parents when they found out that this was Anjaneyan`s second marriage. But it is reported that Ananya later confirmed in an interview of always knowing Anjaneyan being divorced and they married in 2012.

Movie Career
After appearing as a child artist in Pai Brothers, her father`s 1995 production, Ananya, in 2008, debuted in Positive, a Malayalam film, opposite Jayasurya and Suraj, and she was credited as Ayilya. The following year, she made her Tamil movie debut with Naadodigal and changed her screen name to Ananya. The movie was a commercial success, and Ananya won a Vijay Award for Best Debut Actress. She reprised her role in the movie`s Malayalam remake titled Ithu Nammude Katha in 2011.

She starred opposite Mohanlal in the Malayalam movie Shikkar (2010), and after her work in the movie impressed Mohanlal, he started calling her the "Vijayashanthi" of Malayalam cinema. Ananya played a supporting role in the Malayalam war film Kandahar (2010) where she shared screen space with Amitabh Bachchan and Mohanlal. In 2011, her portrayal of a native village girl in the Tamil romantic drama Engaeyum Eppothum won her a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress - Tamil and a Vijay Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination. The same year, she won the Asianet Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for two Malayalam movies: Seniors, a comedy mystery, and Doctor Love, a romantic comedy. The 2012 romantic comedy Gokul Krishna, starring Prajwal Devraj, marked her Kannada movie debut.

Some of her other noteworthy movies include the 2013 Malayalam movie Nadodi mannan where she played the character of a bold Meera, the 2014 comedy thriller Pulivaal, the Tamil comedyAtithi (2014), and The Reporter (2015) in Malayalam. In 2016, realizing the scope of the character of Bhanumati, the sister of the male protagonist, in the Telugu movie A.. Aa - Anasuya Ramalingam Vs Anand Vihari, Ananya accepted the role after having turned it down initially. Although Ananya has had a string of successful movies, she has had a few movies that failed to succeed at the box-office such as Kunjaliyan (2012), a Malayalam satirical film directed by Saji Surendran, Mullamottum Munthiricharum (2012) directed by Aneesh Anwar, and Raktharakshassu 3D (2014) where she played the role of a vampire. Her 2017 release includes the Malayalam language film Tiyaan. Directed by Jiyen Krishnakumar, the movie stars Prithviraj Sukumar and Indrajith Sukumaran in prominent roles.