Nithya Menon appeared first on screen as a
child artiste when she was eight in the Indian English language film,
Hanuman (1998), playing the younger sister to
Tabu's character.
The 2008 off-beat film
Aakasha Gopuram, directed by National Film Award-winning director
K. P. Kumaran, marked her debut in a leading role, in which she was paired with
Mohanlal.
She was in the midst of her 12th class exams when she was offered the
role, after Mohanlal had spotted her on the front cover of a tourism
magazine.
Her performance was well received, with critics writing that she shows
"sparkle in her debut venture" and "makes her entry in an impressive
role",
[14][15] though the film, based on the Norwegian play
The Master Builder, got mixed reviews and was a financial failure.
[14][15] She next made her Kannada debut with the film
Josh. She essayed a supporting role in the film, which received rave reviews,
[16][17][18]
and became a commercial success as well, with her performance garnering
her a nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category at the
57th Filmfare Awards South.
In 2011, her first release was Nandini Reddy's
romantic comedy Ala Modalaindi, which was Nithya's maiden Telugu venture as well.
The film opened to favorable reviews by critics and turned out to become a
sleeper hit,
while Nithya received critical praise for her performance.
Idlebrain's
Jeevi in his review cited that she "epitomized Nitya character with her
fabulous performance", "looks beautiful in all kinds of dresses" and
was "the best debut in recent years of Telugu cinema after
Samantha in
YMC",
while another critic wrote that she was a "charming find" and "...quite the
Genelia replacement that our cinema so badly needs right now."
She eventually won the
Nandi Award for Best Actress for her performance.
Further more, she also sang two songs for the soundtrack album of the film, tuned by
Kalyani Malik Nandini Reddy, later, went on to describe Nithya as "the discovery of the decade".
Following
Ala Modalaindi, she starred in
Santosh Sivan's
historical fiction Urumi as part of an
ensemble cast.
She portrayed a
Chirakkal princess named Bala, playing the love interest of
Prabhu Deva's character,
which gained positive remarks, with a Sify review claiming that she "looks pretty and is a scene stealer".
Nithya quoted that much of her character was based on "Santosh's
perception of who I am", with Sivan stating that he had written that
role for her and that only she could play it. She next appeared in ad-filmmaker Jayendra's bilingual venture
180/
Nootrenbadhu, made and released in Tamil and Telugu, in which she played a
photo journalist named Vidhya.
She described the character as "bubbly, full of life, nosey, wide-eyed and innocent in life" and to be similar to herself. Later the year, she was seen in
Sibi Malayil's
Violin in Malayalam and the
Gautham Menon-produced
Veppam in Tamil.