Based
in the south Indian film industry Kamal Haasan is a highly acclaimed and highly
versatile Indian film actor. He a was born to Rajalakshmi and Srinivasan
as their fourth and youngest child. Kamal’s all three sibling has
the suffix Haasan as a sign of his friendship to one Mr.
Haasan. He entered the film world as a child
actor at the tender age of 6 in the film Kalathur Kannamma and has been
associated with the film world since then.
Kamal Haasan learnt the fine arts in his early years instead of school work.
When
he was a teenager, he started working as an assistant choreographer in movies
and it was during this time that his long and fruitful association with
notable Tamil film director, K.Balachander began.
Kamal’s acting career spreads over four decades. Kamal is known in the
Indian film industry for his talent and versatility he has capably played a
diversity of characters in his films. Kamal has appeared in movies made in six
languages, including the four major South Indian languages - Tamil, Telugu,
Kannada and Malayalam. Kamal other forays were into the North Indian movie indusrty via Hindi and Bengali films. He
is also an actor, director, producer, screenplay writter, lyricst, comedian,
dancer, singer. Kamal acted in commercialised films for a major portion of
his career, but then moved away from the purely commercial ventures. Kamal is
also a trained playback singer and sometimes pens the lyrics for the
soundtracks of some of his recent films. He is also an able performer of
the Bharatanatyam dance form. Kamal had assisted in choreography early in his
career and he is easily the greatest actor Tamil cinema has ever produced.He is
a three-time winner of the National Film Award for Best Actor for the
films Nayagan, Moondram Pirai, and Indian. Kamal
also won the national award for Best Child Actor for his performance in Kalathoor
Kannamma. Kamal has also received the best actor award at the Asian Film
festivals held in 1983 and 1985 for Saagara Sangamamand Swathi
Muthyam respectively. Six of Kamal movies have been sent
as India’s official entry to the Oscars- The only actor to achieve
this feat in the sub-continent. He has won the Filmfare awards 18
times. Kamal was awarded the fourth highest recognition given to Indian
civilians - the Padmashri in 1990. Kamal was conferred an honorary doctorate
by Sathyabama Deemed University, Chennai in 2005.
He has won a total of 171 awards which is more than any
other actor in the world living or dead. Kamal was named as kalaignani meaning
- an idiol of art, by M. Karunanidhi for his classical work towards tamil
cinema.
In Kamal upcoming film Dasavatharam,
he is playing 10 different roles, an act which is the second of its kind in the
world, after the Tamil movie Dambachari (1936). Kamal was married to
Vani Ganapathy and later married Sarika with whom he has two daughters (Shruthi
and Akshara) and with whom he is now separated.
