ENNAMA KANNU, SOWKIYAMA? Sathyaraj

‘I’m like the kid in TZP’
...says Sathyaraj, who, CT finds, is still young at heart and his penchant for the unusual is still evident
SRINIVASA RAMANUJAM Times News Network


On a sunny day in 1976, a lanky lad called Rangaraj hurriedly left his home in Coimbatore with minimal luggage and a letter on him. He hopped over to the post box bang opposite his house and dropped the letter that said, “I am leaving home to go to Chennai and join the movies.” It was addressed to his mother, who — along with his other family members — had forbidden him from venturing anywhere near Kodambakkam.
Thirty three years later, Rangarajan aka actor Sathyaraj still remembers that day clearly. “I should have just dropped the letter off at the post box in my house,” he reminisces, “Why did I have to waste the stamp charge that was levied on it?”
Known for his uncanny dialogue delivery and his ability to poke fun at things that seem normal otherwise, the actor is now trying to learn new languages! He has his hands full with a Telugu movie (in which he co-stars with Trisha and Gopichand), a Malayalam film and a couple of Tamil films. Was venturing into other woods a conscious decision? “I’ve wanted to act in other languages as well, and the right chance came along some time ago. When I started off on the Telugu film, I clearly told them that I was like the kid in Taare Zameen Par! And, the director immediately told me that while the TZP kid had only one Aamir Khan, I’ll have everyone in the crew to assist him!”
Once he decided that he was going to woods closer home, his first concern was that he had to use prompting devices — something he’d never done in Kollywood. “That was when I chanced upon a book written by Marlon Brando. He had, in fact, used prompting most of the time! When an actor of his calibre can use it and perform, I had no second thoughts.” The last few years have been very important for the versatile actor. If Onbathu Roobai Nottu brought out his acting talent, Kannamoochi Enada proved that his special knack of delivering oneliners and jokes was still intact. “I didn’t want to play the socalled hero character,” he states matter-of-factly, “I couldn’t convert myself into a 25-year-old on
screen. Nor was I interested in playing runof-the-mill hero dad roles. I wanted to do movies for directors who could cast me in powerful roles.”
The offbeat and the unusual have often attracted the lanky actor, who was cast in memorable villain roles in the 1980s. “At a film festival that showcased my film Periyar, the audience found it tough to actually recognise me as the person they saw on screen!” Some of them came up to him and hugged him. “I’d never got that kind of a reception and was truly thrilled,” he says. His dialogues on screen — like ‘En characteraye purinjukamatengara’ or ‘Ennama Kannu’ — have always evinced interest among audiences, primarily due to the way in which they were delivered. “My directors have used me perfectly and given me such opportunities,” he says, “Interestingly, the famous Ennama Kannu… dialogue has undergone a journey. It became a song, and soon, a film was made with it as the title!”
Sathyaraj is on the lookout for a historical subject, something that he describes as his “dream project.” “There’s something about those projects, you know,” he starts off with delight, “When ten cars fly on screen, there’s a certain grandeur about it but it’ll never match the charm that a historical subject has.”
T H E 8 0 S E F F E C T
Sathyaraj was recently a guest at Radio Mirchi’s Rewind, a programme to reminisce the cinema industry two decades ago. “There was a sea change in the 1980s, in which the two-hero pattern was slightly broken,” he said, “Due to those changes in Kollywood, almost everybody could aspire to become a hero and that’s probably why I made it too!