An actor who won much acclaim on the national and international level, Kamal has bagged the National Award for the best actor thrice, plus of course a national award for the best child artiste too. He is an actor of a rare breed and has dedicated himself to films and filmmaking and has been involved not just in acting, but in direction, production, scripting et al. A versatile genius, Kamal is a perfectionist par excellence and spares no effort to see to it that his films come out real spectacular. While he earlier made news playing double roles and triple roles (he even played four roles in Michael Madana Kama Rajan), he recently broke his own records by doing ten different full fledged characters in Dasavatharam. And Kamal has always been well-versed in all aspects of filmmaking and never spared any effort to study films and filmmaking. He has got an amazing collection of films as well as books and remains a film personality who is in all respects unique.
Kamal’s completing 50 years in cinema was celebrated in a grand manner in a grand function held on September 30 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai. It was a grand function attended by stalwarts like veteran director K.Balachander, Rajinikanth, Mammootty, Mohanlal, Prakash Raj, Venkatesh, Sharath Kumar, Illayaraja, A.R.Rahman etc. A highlight of the function was the presence of Kamal’s yesteryear heroines including Jaya Chitra, Revathi, Shobhana, Meena, Gowthami, Urvashi, Radhika, Nirosha, Lissy, Sharanya, Tabu etc, with whom he interacted and posed for photographs. Noted dance-choreographer Sundaram and his son and actor-choreographer Prabhu Deva presented on the stage a special mix of dances and songs from Kamal films while S.P. Balasubrahmaniam and Hariharan sang hit numbers from Kamal movies. Kamal’s daughter Shruthi Haasan took the occasion to render on stage some of the old-time hit songs from Kamal movies. Illayaraja presented on stage a poem composed in honour of Kamal. And above all it was an array of impressive speeches delivered by the likes of Rajinikanth, Mammootty, Mohanlal, Prakash Raj, K.Balachander, Shankar, K. Viswanathan, S. P. Muthuraman, Venkatesh etc. Kamal, in return made an emotionally-charged thanks-giving speech and bowed down before all those who made him what he is–the Ulaganayakan or Sakalakalavallabhan of South Indian Cinema.
