The cold and hard gaze, the rustic attitude, and power-packed dialogues on screen will not be missed by audience who have watched him in movies like ‘Polladhavan’, ‘Aadukalam’ and ‘Porkalam’. The professor-turned-actor Kishore Kumar, who has already captured audiences’ attention in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil film industry, is set to make a mark in Mollywood. Kishore will be appearing before the Malayali audience in director Padmakumar’s forthcoming venture ‘Thiruvambaady Thampaan’. “I am doing the role of an MLA from Madurai. The character shares equal screen space with actor Jayaram,” says an excited Kishore.
If you think this actor, who has done many roles with a negative shade, is the same in real life also, then you would be mistaken. In person, he comes across as very amiable, soft spoken and jovial. How does he make so strong an impact then? “I don’t think it is because of me. All the credit goes to my directors. I just sink into the character and do what the character does at a given circumstance,” he says.
He, who never thought of acting as a career, was a professor of Kannada in Sri Sharada First Grade Women’s College, Bangalore. He had a flair for fashion designing. “I was called in to design costumes for the Kannada movie ‘Kanthi’. I went to meet the producer and director of the movie. The director was in search of a villain and on meeting me, he felt I was apt for the role. Everything happened quite quickly and I found myself acting for the film,” says this 37-year-old who had till then acted only in plays during his college days. However, the debut villain also got the Karnataka State award for the best supporting actor for the year 2004.
Then there was no looking back for this actor who soon stepped into Tamil industry with ‘Polladhavan’ where he was appreciated for the role of Selvam. Now he is busy shooting a biopic on Veerappan, where he is doing the lead role. “Veerappan’s role is a really challenging one because of his popularity. For Kannadigas, he is a negative character who abducted the late actor Rajkumar. So, accepting the role was tricky,” Kishore says. His tall frame and his much-acclaimed moustache are two features that made him a sure-shot for the character of Veerappan. “To be fit for the character I shed 5kgs and roamed the forest and village, where Veerappan lived, along with the director,” adds Kishore. Veerappan is a person who is both loved and hated by people. “In the movie, the character is showed from the neutral viewpoint of a journalist. He is portrayed as the person he was.”
Having worked in four south Indian languages, he says he found all the industries very cooperative. “I think I was lucky to get a good team to work with in every movie. Working with director Vetrimaaran, who introduced me through Polladhavan and also gave a role in Aadukalam, actually boosted my confidence level. He has a unique way of telling a story which reaches out to people through complex emotional drama,” says Kishore.
Being a Kannadiga, acting in Malayalam is an altogether novel experience for him, both in terms of language and people.
“Doing a Malayalam film is challenging as I don’t know the language. But I do believe that good films do not want any language,” he says and adds that he had only watched Malayalam films on Doordarshan as a child. However he has bought books to learn Malayalam, because as an actor, he believes in doing any role only after understanding the language and the culture, he says.
All rude and arrogant onscreen, he is also the father of two lovely boys, aged five and two. When asked whether his sons are afraid to see their father as a villain in movies, he says “I have not showed them my movies where I am getting beaten up. For children, their father is always a hero.”
aswathy.k@newindianexpress.com