Mohanlal

Mohanlal Vishwanathan Nair (born 21 May 1960),

A four-time  National Award  winner, he has won two  Best Actor Awards , one  Special Jury Award , one  Award for Best Film  (as producer) and six  Best Actor Kerala state awards , the most times by any actor. In 2001 the  Government of India  honoured him with the  Padma Shri  for his contributions to  Indian cinema . In 2009, he was granted the honorary rank of  Lieutenant Colonel  by the  Territorial Army  which was the first instance in the history of Indian Cinema of an actor being conferred an Army rank. In 2010,  Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit  bestowed an  honorary doctorate  upon him.

Mohanlal was born in  Elanthur  in  Pathanamthitta district  of Kerala, to Vishwanathan Nair, a lawyer and government employee and Santhakumari. The family later shifted to Mudavanmugal inThiruvananthapuram, which was the house of his mother. He attended the Mudavanmukal LP school and later enrolled in the  Model School, Thiruvananthapuram . An average student at school, he was drawn in to the world of arts; he used to participate in school-plays. In the sixth grade, the young Mohanlal was chosen the best actor in his school, an award that was usually bagged by tenth graders.

He attended  Mahatma Gandhi College in  Thiruvananthapuram  for his bachelor's degree. He continued his association with acting and won numerous best actor awards. It was here that he met a group of fellow-students, who were passionate about theatre and feature films. They were instrumental in getting him his first breakthrough and some of them, notably  Priyadarshan ,  M.G.Sreekumar  and Maniyanpilla Raju , went on to become popular movie directors or actors or singers .

Lal's first film was "Thiranottam" (1978). The film ran into trouble with the Censor Board and was only released in 1 center. His breakthrough came in 1980, when he was selected for the role of the antagonist, in  Manjil Virinja Pookkal , which was a blockbuster hit. He played roles of gradually increasing importance in a number of movies in the following years. In the year 1983, he was credited in more than 25 feature films.  Uyarangalil , a story of cheating and deception, written by noted script-writer  M.T.Vasudevan Nair  and directed by  I. V. Sasi  was the highlight of this period. He then expanded into comic roles in his director-friend and college mate  Priyadarshan's debut  Poochakkoru Mookkuthi .

The period (1986–1995) is widely regarded as the  golden age of Malayalam cinema with films characterised by detailed screenplays, lucid narration and fresh ideas narrowing the gap between art and commercial films. As a young talent on the rise, Mohanlal obtained roles that gave him ample scope to display a wide range of emotions and started some very fruitful associations with many of the better directors and writers in Malayalam cinema.

1986 was one of his best years.  Sathyan Anthikad's  T.P.Balagopalan M.A  got him his first Kerala State award for best actor. His role of an underworld don in  Rajavinte Makan  saw the emergence of Mohanlal as the superstar of Malayalam cinema.Rajavinte Makan was the block buster movie of the year 1986. In the same year, he played an asylum inmate in  Thalavattom, a harassed house-owner in Sanmanassullavarku Samadhanam , a journalist in  M.T.Vasudevan Nair 's Panchagni, a farm owner in love in  Namukku Parkkan Munthiri Thoppukal  and an unemployed youth forced to become a Goorkha in  Gandhi Nagar 2nd street.

His association with the writer-director combination of  Sreenivasan  and  Sathyan Anthikkad , who excelled in making socially hard-hitting satires, resulted in films such as  Nadodikkattu, in which he played an unemployed youth and  Varavelpu , in which he played a Gulf returnee who is welcomed back home to greedy relatives and a state with a hostile climate for entrepreneurs. Director Priyadarshan's musical comedies, notably  Chithram  and  Kilukkam  had him playing the typical Indian romantic hero and increased his popularity among the teenage movie-goers.

Mohanlal portrayed a real-life character in  ">Devaasuram  (1993)directed by  I.V. Sasi  and written by  Renjith , the film went on to become a hit and a  cult classic

Thoovanathumbikal  in which he portrayed a person torn between his twin love interests, broke many stereotypes in Indian films such as the leading man falling in love with a second woman immediately after he is rejected by the first. Amrithamgamaya was about a man who ends up at the house of a boy whom he had unknowingly killed in college during a ragging session.  Thazhvaram  was another notable film of this period.

The combination of writer  Lohitha Das  and director  Sibi Malayil  is considered to have produced some of his most haunting roles. His role of Sethu Madhavan, who dreams of becoming a police officer but ends up as a criminal in the film  Kireedam  earned him a  Special Jury award . Another role of a classical singer who is burdened by the jealousy and final death of his singer brother in  Bharatham helped him bag the Best Actor National Award the following year.

The 90s saw him continuing his success with more entertainers like  His Highness Abdullah , where he played a  Muslim  disguised as a  Namboodiri  to assassinate a royal. His other notable commercial movies during this period such as  Midhunam ,  Minnaram , Thenmavin kombath continued the tradition of the 80s with neat well-written scripts and a rich set of characters.  Devaasuram , written by Ranjith and directed by  I. V. Sasi , set in the feudal atmosphere of central Kerala, was particularly noted for Mohanlal's portrayal of a proud, rich and brash young man who is slowly humbled by a chain of events. Director Bhadran's  Spadikam  became a cult classic for the revolutionary way in which the stunts were picturised . Critically acclaimed films were few in number during this period and were mostly semi-entertainers like  Manichitrathazhu , which had the female lead  Shobhana  bagging a National award for best actress.

This was also a period when father-son duo of Thilakan and Mohanlal had a great impact on malayalam film industry and especially on fans of both actors.

During this period of his career, film makers cashed in on the immense popularity that Mohanlal enjoyed in Kerala by portraying him as an invincible larger-than-life hero in movies. Movies like  Aaram Thamburan ,  Narasimham ,  Ravanaprabhu  and  Naran  used this image of his to great effect and became blockbusters. After their initial novelty, these films faced criticism from many quarters over their lack of realism and for creating movies around Mohanlal.  Priyadarshan 's  Kalapani  (an account of India's freedom struggle against the British that focused on the  Cellular prisons  of  Andaman islands ) and  Lohithadas 's Kanmadam  were some of his notable films during the late 1990s.

It was at this time that Mohanlal started getting noticed outside the Malayalam-speaking world. He acted in his first non-Malayalam movie when popular director  Mani Ratnam  roped him in for the Tamil film   Iruvar . It had Mohanlal playing  MGR , a cult figure in the neighbouring  Tamil Nadu . The Indo-French production,  Vaanaprastham , in which he played the role of a  Kathakali  dance artist with an identity crisis, won him the second National award for Best actor and was the first film that got him international recognition. The film was selected for the competitive section at the  Cannes Film Festival  and his performance was critically acclaimed.

In 2002, Mohanlal acted in his first  Bollywood  movie,  Company , which introduced him to the wider  Hindi -speaking audience in India. It was a critical and commercial hit. He won the  IIFA  award,  Star Screen Award  for best supporting actor for this role. In 2006, the film  Thanmathra  ("Molecule"), won him the Kerala State Award for Best Actor for portraying a person affected by Alzheimer's disease. His second Bollywood movie,  Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag , was the remake of the 1975 blockbuster movie  Sholay , in which he played the character of the inspector played by  Sanjeev Kumar  in the original. Mohanlal won the 2007 Kerala State Award for Best Actor for his performance as Valiakathu Moosa in the movie Paradesi. In 2009, Mohanlal acted with  Kamal Hassan  in a  Tamil  movie called  Unnaipol Oruvan . He started the year 2010 with the realistic family entertainer  Evidam Swargamanu , directed by Roshan Andrews, and the comedy film  Alexander the Great , directed by Murali Nagavalli.

•  Mohanlal's movie  Guru  was chosen as  India's official entry to the Oscars  to be considered for nomination in the  Best Foreign Film  for 1997.

•  Mohanlal has won several National Awards: the  Special Jury Award  (Actor), two  Best Actor  awards, and the  Best Film  award (Producer).

•  Mohanlal has received 10 National Award nominations in the Best Actor category — more nominations than any other actor.

•  Mohanlal was awarded the  Padma Shri  by the Government of India in 2001.

•  Mohanlal's film was screened in the " Un Certain Regard " section at the  1999 Cannes Film Festival .

•  Mohanlal was chosen as the Most Popular Keralite by a survey conducted by  CNN-IBN  in 2006.

•  Mohanlal was granted the rank of honorary  Lieutenant Colonel  in the  Indian Territorial Army  in 2009, which was first time in the history of Indian cinema.

•  Mohanlal was awarded an  honorary doctorate  by  Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit  in 2010.