P. Ravi Shankar

P. Ravi Shankar Biography

P. Ravi Shankar is an actor, dubbing artist, director and writer of south Indian cinema. He is also known by the names, Bommali Ravi Shankar and Sai Ravi. He has been most successful as a dubbing artist and owns more than 3500 films in his credit, belonging to Telugu and Tamil languages. He has won nandi awards for best dubbing artist 7 times, including one hat-trick, thus becoming the most successful dubbing artist of Telugu cinema since late 1990’s. He won the Nandi awards for the movies – Prema Katha (1999), Indra (2002), Sye (2004), Pokiri (2006), Athidi (2007), Arundhati (2008) and Anjaneyulu (2009) proving his talent in this field. He received Tamil Nadu state award for best dubbing artist in the year 2002 for Dhill. As an actor, he won Filmfare award for best supporting actor for Kannada movie Kempe Gowda in 2011 and Bangalore Times Film Awards for best villain for the same role itself.

Ravi was born and brought up in Chennai. His father P. J. Sharma and elder brother Sai Kumar too are actors and dubbing artists of south Indian cinema. Ravi Shankar made his film debut as a lead actor in 1986 with the Telugu movie, Aalochinchandi. But later he moved to supporting roles and achieved success through the movies - Madhura Nagarilo and Keechurallu. Then he took a long break from his acting career and returned back only in 2001 doing Villain roles onscreen. ‘Tholi Valapu’ was his comeback movie. In parallel, he did the role of a dubbing artist and received instant success. Throughout the decade of 2000’s he completely dominated the Telugu film industry as the most successful dubbing artist.

Similar to his father and brother, he turned a dubbing artist when his opportunities as an actor got dried up. Telugu film Rowdyism Zindabad marked his successful entry as a dubbing artist. Later he gave his voice to many noted actors, particularly for the actors belonging to Bollywood. 2600 films in Telugu, 1000 in Tamil and over 150 films each in Kannada and Malayalam can be included in his credit as a dubbing artist. In 2002, he directed a Kannada film titled Durgi. Film actor Aadi is his nephew.

Published: N/A

Updated: April 04, 2014