Priya Anand (born 17 September 1986) is an Indian film actress and model who appears in Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu and Kannada films. After pursuing higher studies in the US, she began a career in modelling in 2008 before making her acting debut in the Tamil film Vaamanan (2009) and then her Telugu debut in Leader a year later. She made her Bollywood debut in 2012 with a supporting role in English Vinglish and subsequently appeared in the films Fukrey (2013) as Priya and Rangrezz (2013).
Priya was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu as the only child to a Tamil father named Bharadwaj and a half-Telugu, half-Marathi mother named Radha. She was brought up in both her parents' hometowns, Chennai and Hyderabad, becoming fluent in Tamil and Telugu. Besides native languages, Priya is proficient in English, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Spanish as well.
Priya became fascinated with films, developing an interest in cinema, since childhood, and noted that she has been dreaming of getting into the film industry and working on technical aspects of film making, but confesses she never thought of becoming an actor. She moved to the US, where she pursued her higher studies. Keeping her later career in mind, she studied Communications and Journalism at SUNY Albany. In 2008, she returned to India and ventured into modeling, appearing in various television advertisements like Nutrine Maha Lacto, Prince Jewellery and Cadbury Dairy Milk.