Amala was born in Calcutta present-day Kolkata to a Bengali Indian Navy officer and an Irish mother. Their family shifted to Madras present-day Chennai where she was brought up. She has a brother. Amala holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Bharatanatyam from Kalakshetra college of fine arts, in Chennai. She was persuaded to join films by T Rajendar, who visited her home with his wife Usha and convinced her mother to let her act in the film, which would be a classical dance-oriented film featuring her in a Bharatanatyam dancing. That film was Mythili Ennai Kaathali released in 1986 which was a huge box office hit.
Winning overnight fame, she charmed cine-goers in a flurry of fifty films, including a number of Tamil box office hits. She has predominantly worked in Tamil films, in addition to Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, and Kannada-language films. She was a leading actress in the Tamil film industry from 1986 to 1992 and has appeared in many blockbusters in Tamil and other languages. She received Filmfare Award for Best Actress in Malayalam for the film Ulladakkam (1991). She acted with her future husband Akkineni Nagarjuna in hits such as Nirnayam and Siva. Shiva is a trendsetter film in Telugu directed by Ram Gopal Varma.
Amala married Telugu actor Nagarjuna on 11 June 1992 and the couple has a son, actor Akhil Akkineni born in 1994. She quit acting in 1992 following her marriage to Nagarjuna. They currently live in Hyderabad. After a hiatus of 20 years, she made a comeback in 2012 with the Telugu film Life is Beautiful. She received a CineMAA Award for Best Outstanding Actress and a Telugu category Filmfare Award for best-supporting actress in 2013 for her portrayal. She returned to Malayalam cinema with Care Of Saira Banu after a gap of 25 years, since Ulladakkam.
Amala is the co-founder of Blue Cross of Hyderabad, a non-government organisation in Hyderabad, which works toward the welfare of animals and the preservation of animal rights.
She gave many live performances worldwide. She is fluent in English, Tamil, Hindi, and Telugu. Her recent Telugu Tamil Bilingual Oke Oka Jeevitham, a 2022 Indian science fiction melodrama film is a hit at the box office where she plays the hero's mother.
