இளயதளபதி விஜய்

Career

Vijay's career graph has been markedly different from Ajith's. While Ajith's has had several ups and downs (think of a sine wave!), Vijay's has been a slow but steady rise to the top followed by a steep decline. He had the immense advantage of having a popular director as his father and so, found an easy entry into films. It was his father S.A.Chandrasekhar who introduced him as a hero in Naalaya Theerppu in 1992. But he did not stop there and continued to make several movies with his son as hero. Though these movies (in most of which Vijay was paired with Sangavi) were steeped in vulgarity and unabashedly targeted the front benchers, they achieved the important objective of keeping Vijay in the public eye.


Vijay's real break came with Vikraman's Poove Unakkaaga. The movie rewrote box-office records and Vijay, who departed from his typical roles to play a soft-spoken, lovelorn youngster, found his ticket to stardom. He perfected the role in movies like Love Today and Nilaave Vaa and gradually found increased acceptance among the fairer sex too. The peak that I mentioned before in his career was undoubtedly Fazil's Kaadhalukku Mariyaadhai. The movie was a blockbuster and the latest in a string of hits that placed Vijay in the hallowed company of Rajnikanth and Kamalahassan as far as the distributors were concerned. At that point, he could do no wrong as even Priyamudan, where he played a negative character of a youth obsessed with a woman, became a hit.


Vijay's downfall started with 1999's Endrendrum Kaadhal. His movies started falling like nine pins and he must have seen the writing on the wall with the failure of Minsaara Kannaa, which was helmed by hit director K.S.Ravikumar. His father hastened his downfall with the terrible Nenjinile. The last nail in the coffin, so to speak, was Fassil's Kannukkul Nilavu. The failure of this movie, which brought together the same team that was behind Kaadhalukku Mariyaadhai, has shaken Vijay's confidence. But his personal life has always been on an even keel and he was recently married to Sangeetha after an arranged alliance. Memories are notoriously short in Kodambakkam where an actor or actress is only as good as their last hit. With Kushi too being a disappointment at the box-office, Vijay is desperately looking for a hit for some time now to get back into the race and make things interesting for the viewers. He has several releases this year like Friends, remake of a Malayalam superhit and Priyamaanavale, reteaming him with Simran. Lets hope these push him back into the race.