Superstar Rajni Film Industry

June 11th Thursday

RAJNIKANTH ENTRY TO THE FILM INDUSTRY:



Rajnikanth was born on December 12 1949 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. He was the fourth child to his parents, Rambhai and Ramoji Rao.His original name was Sivaji Rao Gaekwad. He lost his mother at the age of five. He had his schooling at the Acharya Patasala in Bangalore and then at the Vivekananda Balak Sangh, a unit of the Ramakrishna Mission. His mother tongue is Marathi, though he has not done any films in it.Before starting his career in the film industry, he had to take up all sorts of odd jobs. He served as a bus conductor for Karnataka state transport corporation in Bangalore. It was during this time that he nurtured his acting interests by performing in various stage plays.

ACTING CAREER:

A friend helped him to join the Madras Film institute where Rajnikanth completed basic acting course in 1974 at the age of 25.He started his acting career in Kannada in the movie Kathaa Sangama, directed by Puttanna Kanagal, in 1976.In Tamil, he started with playing supporting roles, beginning as a cancer patient in Apoorva Raagangal (1975), directed by K. Balachander, who assigned him his stage name Rajnikanth. After several villainous roles, his first positive role was Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri (1979), in which Rajnikanth played a
failed lover in the first half and a do-gooder in the second.

The second phase of his life started with K Balaji’s Billa, a superhit disproving the canard spread by detractors that Rajnikant was “finished”. He was accepted as a full-fledged hero. Billa was followed by a row of hits like Pokkiri Raja, Thanikkattu Raja, Naan Mahaan Alla and the all-important Moondru Mugham, in which Rajni essayed a triple role. Even two decades after its release, the last continues to be a box-office draw and Rajni’s fans can never tire of the thalaivar’s verbal clash with villain Senthamarai. K Balachander’s first home production, Nettrikkam proved to be yet another milestone in Rajni’s career.As an actor, Rajnikant’s greatest asset, apart from his style is his sense of humour and comic timing. Like Amitabh Bachchan is popular for his drunken soliloquies, Rajnikant is famous for his comic encounters with snakes, repeated umpteen times.

In the early 80s, Rajnikant made a foray into Bollywood with Andhaa Kanoon, a superhit. But Rajnikant could not concentrate on Hindi films because he was already safely ensconced down South. He still made a few films in Hindi, to mention specially Chaalbaaz which had Sridevi in a dual role.After several films in the Eighties, he played a Hindu saint in his 100th movie, Sri Raghavendra. Many others followed, among them dramas, comedies and, at the end of the eighties, action-oriented family entertainers like Velaikkaran and Manidhan.Annamalai, which released in 1992, was the first Rajini film to gross almost Rs. 100 million at the box office.A new trend where his films’ collections exceed normal regional film expectations started off with Basha, followed by Annamalai, Arunachalam, Ejaman, Muthu and Padayappa. It’s now an accepted fact that only a Rajnikant film can break records set by his own films.Apart from Tamil, Rajnikanth has acted in over 160 movies, including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Bengali. He has also acted in a Hollywood movie Bloodstone in 1988.

Rajnikanth was awarded the Padma Bhushan award in the year 2000 and was rated as one of the most influential persons in South Asia by Asia week. Rajnikanth has won the Filmfare Best Actor Award, South on 2 occasions. He is the highest paid actor in India and the second
highest paid actor in Asia after Jackie Chan.

Unlike the eighties, several movies during his nineties were successful, like Muthu or Basha. At 53, his Baba released amid fanfare. Although the film grossed enough to cover its budget, it was viewed as a miserable showing and fell short of market expectations accumulating heavy losses for the distributors. Rajnikanth himself returned the losses back to the distributors who had immense faith in him. The whole affair cost him dear in terms of repute of making a comeback.

Chandramukhi, a remake of the Malayalam movie Manichitrathazhu. Chandramukhi was claimed as one of the most successful Tamil films ever as it ran in theatres for over 700 days since release and still running. His next film, Sivaji: The Boss, directed by S. Shankar will be released in 2007.