Kamal Haasan

Kamal Haasan is an actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker who has worked primarily in Tamil-language cinema for over six decades and is considered to be one of the greatest method actors and auteurs of Indian cinema. Widely acclaimed as an actor, writer and director, he has won several Indian film awards, including four National Film Awards and numerous Southern Filmfare Awards, and is known for having starred in the most number of films submitted by India in contention for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has also featured in films as a screenwriter, songwriter, playback singer, choreographer, and lyricist. His film production company, Rajkamal International, has produced several of his films. After beginning as a child actor, Kamal Haasan's breakthrough came with his role in the 1975 drama Apoorva Raagangal, in which he played a rebellious youth in love with an older woman. He secured his second Indian National Film Award for his portrayal of a guileless school teacher who tends a child-like amnesiac in 1982's Moondram Pirai, and was later noted for his performance in Mani Ratnam's Nayagan (1987), which was ranked in TIME magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies" list. Since then, he has gone on to appear in numerous other notable films, such as his own productions, Hey Ram (2000) and Virumaandi (2004), as well as the Dasavathaaram (2008), in which he became the first actor in history to appear in ten distinct roles in the same film.