CHENNAI: Veteran character artiste Vinu Chakravarthy, who regaled fans with his commanding screen presence in over 1,000 films, including Annamalai and Guru Sishyan, breathed his last on Thursday evening around 7 pm. He was 71.
He was ailing for the past few years. Besides being diabetic, he had high blood pressure. As soon as the news broke, tributes began pouring in from members of the film fraternity, as celebrities took to Twitter and Facebook to express their condolences.
A regular in Rajinikanth films, the actor had worked with leading stars including Sivaji Ganesan, Kamal Haasan, and Vijayakant among others. He was considered a lucky charm for the superstar with whom he had shared screen space in 25 films.
Before his acting debut, he worked as a scriptwriter in the Kannada film industry. Also, he had written screenplay for a few Tamil films like Vandichakkaram starring Sivakumar and Saritha.
The project marked the debut of Silk Smitha in Kollywood. Reportedly, he wrote the script in 1976 and was working on the character ‘Silk’ for almost three years before the team took off in 1979.
While the Hindi film, Dirty Picture, was in the making, he had commented that Vidya Balan “was not an apt choice to play Silk Smitha on screen”, which created some controversy.
Vinu Chakravarthy’s last film was Balaji Mohan’s Vaayai Moodi Pesavum while Muni was his 1,000th film. He in fact didn’t take any remuneration for Thalaivasal Vijay’s Apoorva Mahan, which was based on the life history of Shirdi Sai Baba, since he was an ardent devotee of Baba.
The actor is survived by wife Karnapoo, daughter Shanmuga Priya and son Saravana Priyan.