Tamilnadu Tirunelveli district born Actor Sridevi died on Saturday night after a cardiac arrest in Dubai, according to family sources. The actor, who has two daughters Janhavi and Khushi, was reportedly with her husband Boney Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor in the country. The actor was 54 and had gone to UAE to attend the wedding ceremony of nephew, Mohit Marwah.

Sridevi was called the first female superstar of Bollywood and has worked in over 250 films in various languages in her career spanning almost 45 years. Her last release was Mom in 2016.

According to Indianexpress.com, Sridevi’s brother-in-law, Sanjay Kapoor was quoted as saying, “Yes, it is true that Sridevi passed away. I just landed here, I was in Dubai and now I am flying back to Dubai. It happened roughly around 11.00-11.30.

No one was more surprised by the film’s success than Sridevi because her first Hindi film Solva Sawan (1979, remake of Tamil film 16 Vayathinile) had bombed and she was ready to go back to Madras where she was already a well-established leading actress. (Even Sadma, Hindi remake of Tamil film Moondaram Pirai, which released in the same year – 1983 – flopped).

But she stayed on in Bombay and soared high, redefining the character, persona, stature and box office allure of the Hindi film heroine.

Her string of hits with Jeetendra notwithstanding (they did around 16 films together), when we remember her today, it is really for films like Nagina (1986), Mr India (1987), Chandni (1989), Chalbaaz (1989), Lamhe (1991), Khuda Gawah (1992) and to a lesser degree, movies such as Janbaaz (1986), Gumrah (1993) and Laadla (1994). By the time Judaai (1997) came, Sridevi’s star was already fading, only to burn again, brightly and briefly, in 2012, when she starred in English Vinglish.

The sudden demise of veteran actor Sridevi has sent shockwaves throughout the Indian film industry with many Bollywood celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Kamal Haasan and Aamir Khan mourning and expressing their condolences.

The news of Sridevi's death spread like wildfire with stars such as her contemporary Madhuri Dixit, Priyanka Chopra, Sushmita Sen and Riteish Deshmukh taking to social media to express their grief.

The first one, however, was Amitabh Bachchan who in a cryptic tweet wrote, "Don't know why, feeling a strange restlessness." The megastar had worked with Sridevi in "Khuda Gawah" (1992).

Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, who worked with Sridevi in "Sadma", the Hindi remake of their 1982 Tamil film "Moondram Pirai", wrote on Twitter that the lullaby 'Suramayi ankhiyon mein' from the movie haunts him now.