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Rajnikanth

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Shivaji Rao Gaekwad (born on December 12 1949) is a popular Tamil film actor. His screen name is Rajinikanth.

Contents

Early life

Rajinikanth was born in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu as fourth child in the Marathi family of Ramabai and Ramoji Rao. He lost his mother at the age of five. He had his schooling at the Acharya Patasala in Bangalore and then at the Vivekananda Balak Sangh, a unit of the Ramakrishna Mission.

Before starting his career in the film industry, he served as a bus conductor for Karnataka State Transport Corporation in Bangalore. It was during this time that he nurtured his acting interests.

Acting career

A friend helped him to join the Madras Film institute and Rajinikanth completed basic acting course in 1974 at the age of 25.[[Citing sources citation needed]]

First, he played supporting roles, beginning as a cancer patient in Apoorva Raagangal (1975), directed by K. Balachander, who assigned him his stage name Rajinikanth. After several villainous roles, his first positive role was Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri (1979), in which Rajinikanth played a failed lover in the first half and a do-gooder in the second.

After several hits in the Eighties, he played a Hindu saint in his 100th movie, Sri Raghavendra. Many others followed, among them dramas, comedies, and, at the end of the eighties, action-oriented family entertainers like Velaikkaran and Manidhan.

Several movies during his Nineties were successful, like Muthu or Badsha. At 53, his Baba released amid fanfare. Although the film grossed enough to cover its budget, it was viewed as a miserable showing and fell short of market expectations accumulating heavy losses for the distributors. Rajinikanth himself returned the losses back to the distributors who had immense faith in him. The whole affair cost him dear in terms of repute of making a comeback. Hit hard by the turnout for that movie, he was reluctant to accept any new offers until he was satisfied the script was a sure seler.

And then came along his next release, the successful Chandramukhi, a remake of the Malayalam movie Manichitrathazhu. His next movie, Sivaji, directed by S. Shankar, will be released in 2007.

Apart from Tamil, Rajinikanth has acted in over 160 movies, including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Bengali and all remakes of Tamil Movies. He has also acted as extra in a low-budget Hollywood movie (Bloodstone in 1988).

Rajinikanth was awarded the Padma Bhushan award in the year 2000 and was rated as one of the most influential persons in South Asia by Asiaweek. He has 3,000 fan clubs with around 100,000 fans. [[Citing sources citation needed]]

Personal Life

Rajinikanth married his wife Latha on 26 February 1981. The wedding took place in the holy temple at Tirupathi. He has two daughters, Aishwarya and Soundarya. Aishwarya married actor Dhanush on 18 November 2004. The marriage was not approved by Rajini initially which led to intense media speculation forcing him eventually to accept the improper match half-heartedly.[[Citing sources citation needed]]

Rajinikanth has claimed tutelage from Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sri Raghavendra. Rajinikanth frequently makes pilgrimages to shrines in the Himalayas and Rishikesh.

Politics

In 1996, Rajinikanth supported the DMK-TMC-party during their election and helped them to defeat the ruling AIADMK party in the Tamilnadu assembly elections. But in the subsequent elections in 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2004 his political clout has waned dramatically. For the 2006 Tamilnadu Assembly Elections, he refrained from vocally supporting any one particular party though he is ideologically closer to NDA front headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Filmography

Noughts

Nineties

Eighties

Seventies

External links

 

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