Rajeev Ravindranathan

Rajeev Ravindranathan Biography

Rajeev Ravindranathan is a theater artist and film actor known for playing supporting roles for Bollywood films. He got noticed for Bollywood’s iconic film – 3 Idiots in 2009, in which he was seen in the role of a senior ragging student who gets 'shock' by Aamir Khan's character Rancho. Though his role was short it got noticed. Later he played several lead roles and supporting roles for Bollywood, and was also seen in N. Lingusamy's Tamil film – Vettai. English Vinglish and Shamitabh are other noted works. Though he played lead role in Bas Yun Hi aside Nandita Das and Freaky Chakra with Deepti Naval, it was his role as ragging student in 3 Idiots which gained him attention.

Rajeev Ravindranathan was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Currently he is settled in Bangalore.  Since young he got attracted to theater. He has a strong theatre background and is associated with theater world since 1999. He has also done standup comedy shows. He performed for the plays, Owl and the Pussy cat, Zoo Story and Filth. Irvine Welsh's One-man show, Filth is best among his performances in which portrayed 30 different characters. He has also worked with ad-industry in India and has been featured in popular ads of Aegon Religare insurance, Saffola Oats, Bru Coffee, TVS Victor, Sprite, Prestige and Hamam soap. Rajeev runs an advertising agency called People and is now a part of Black Coffee Productions, a theatre group in Bangalore.

Though he is associated with Bollywood since 2003, playing lead role in Bas Yun Hi, apart from supporting role in Freaky Chakra and Phir Milenge, 3 Idiots changed everything.  He played the role of moving ticket clerk in Freaky Chakra. In 2008 he got a call from Rajkumar Hirani who asked him to do one among the three of 3 Idiots. Though he auditioned for Chatur’s (bookworm) role, he didn’t get it. He even finished two months of shooting before he got rejected. Once the director realized that he didn’t fit to the role, gave him the small role of a bulling student which got noticed.

Since then he plays small roles for movies, and has worked with Sri Devi for the movie, English Vinglish, where he played the role of Ramamurthy, a Tamil software engineer, who joined an English-speaking course with Sri Devi. He also worked with Amitabh Bachchan and Dhanush for the movie, Shamitabh.

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Updated: June 19, 2016