When superstar Rajinikanth helped ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay convince his father to launch him as an actor

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In a Directors’ Union show that was organised in 2010, Vijay, a self-confessed Rajinikanth fan, opened up about how the superstar played a pivotal role in his entry into cinema. “I was quite weak in studies, and after my tenth standard, I was at a crossroads. Since I had an interest in cinema, I expressed the same to my father. However, he wasn’t accepting of the idea. There was a lot of struggle that went behind him giving the green signal,” said Vijay, who revealed that an audition tape did the trick.

“I recreated the famous Rajini sir dialogue from Annamalai. It was about waging a challenge, and how he’d get the better of his friend-turned-villain. I spoke that dialogue, shot it on video, and showed it to my dad. Then, he decided to launch me in Naalaiya Theerpu,” said Vijay, who had the chance to share screenspace with Radha Ravi, the very actor who played the antagonist’s father in Annamalai.

Interestingly, SA Chandrasekhar, known for being quite the strict disciplinarian on sets, didn’t stop dissuading the actor in his son even on the sets of Naalaiya Theerpu. In the same event, he opened up about how Vijay was made to perform quite a heavy emotional scene with veteran actors like Radha Ravi and Srividya. “I knew that he had the fire in him, and he performed scenes from Rajini sir’s films, but I still didn’t want to make him an actor. So, I canned this scene on Day 1 in the hope that it would scare him away… but as they say… rest is history.”

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In fact, Vijay is such a Rajinikanth fan that when asked to pick his favourite film from his father’s filmography, which has over 70 films, the Leo actor picked Naan Sigappu Manidhan, the only Rajinikanth film to have been directed by his father.

On the acting front, Vijay is gearing up for the last lap of his acting career, and will be seen in H Vinoth’s Jananayagan, which features Pooja Hegde, Bobby Deol, and Mamitha Baiju in pivotal roles.