Agathiyan

Agathiyan Biography

Agathiyan is a National award winning film director and cinematographer of Tamil cinema. Kaadhal Kottai, released in 1996 is his most successful and remarkable movie which bagged him three national awards. A major blockbuster, Agathiyan won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil, Best Direction as well as the Best Screenplay awards. The director handled the cinematography as well. The movie was later remade to several Indian languages including Bollywood – titled Sirf Tum, directed by himself. Both his daughters are into the entertainment industry. His elder daughter Karthika is a TV host while younger daughter Vijayalakshmi is a noted Tamil actress, of Chennai 600028 fame.

He was born into a middle class agriculturist family who was not interested in studies. Instead he loved movies and set off to Chennai to pursue his dreams. His family didn’t support him. But his path was not easy and he struggled a lot and started off doing odd jobs in film production houses. He didn’t have any money in hand. Agathiyan tasted success during his late 40s only and struggled a lot, assisting different directors for long years. In 1992, he wrote the script of Pondatti Rajyam. Madhumathi in 1993 marked his film debut as a director. He was given the first break by Anbalaya Prabhakaran, who is known for making small budget movies promoting budding directors. Luck didn’t help him and the movie, based on teenage love bombed at box office.

He got his next film offer in 1996. The movie was Vaanmathi starring Ajith Kumar and Swathi, which received success at box office running for 175 days. He teamed up with Ajith once again the same year and gave one of the biggest hit of the year - Kaadhal Kottai. Both these movies helped young actor Ajith to cement his position among the budding actors of 1990s. Same year Gokulathil Seethai was also release, a box office hit. With 3 National awards for a single movie, Agathan rose to fame and there was no turning back after that. The film earned him the first Filmfare Award for Best Tamil Director. He directed Sirf Tum – the Hindi version of - Kaadhal Kottai. He received good reviews for the movie and was a moderate success at box office. Salman Khan played a cameo role in the movie. Lead actors were Priya Gill, Sanjay Kapoor and Sushmita Sen. He directed one more Hindi film - Hum Ho Gaye Aapke, remake of his film - Gokulathil Seethai, though not successful.

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Updated: December 11, 2015