Shabareesh Varma

Shabareesh Varma Biography

Shabareesh Varma is an upcoming music director, lyricist and film actor best known for his association with his school buddy - Alphonse Putharen. He has been associated with Putharen for both his direction ventures – Neram and Premam, in the form of an actor, lyricist as well as singer. Both turned out to be huge hits, musically and commercially. He gained attention as a lyricist cum playback singer with the smash hit of Pistah Sumakiraya song from the bilingual movie Neram. In fact, he added some additional lyrics to the meaningless song, pictured on Jagathy Sreekumar for the movie – Kinnaram of early 1980s. He shot to instant fame with the magical lyrics of Putharen’s all-time blockbuster – Premam released in 2015. Besides singing three hit songs of the movie, he penned lyrics for all the eight songs except "Rockaankuthu". The beautiful lyrics “Malare” became the top song of the year, perhaps the most popular romantic Malayalam song in the recent times.   

Varma was born in Paravur, Kochi. He is the son of writer P K Nandana Varma and carnatic violinist Sulekha Varma. Like many cast and crew of Neram, Alphonse Putharen and Varma too were classmates at MES, Aluva. There was a group of friends who dreamt about movies and Varma too belong to them. Among them, a few reached Chennai to learn more about cinema, and Varma was one among them. While Alphonse chose digital film making in SAE, he opted for a sound engineering course. Later the same old friends reunited with some new friends for some short films and other forms of cinema.

When Neram was first conceived as a short film, he played the role of protagonist. Before that he has done acting in one short film - "Cling-Cling". Soon after the course, Varma got associated with a few Tamil films like Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa, Ye Maaya Chesave, Nadunisi Naaygal, Pizza (2012 film), Soodhu Kavvum, Pizza II: Villa and Jigarthanda. Though Pista song for Neram helped him to gain attention, with the chartbuster hits of Premam (particularly Malare), Varma has cemented his position as one of the leading and promising lyricists of Malayalam cinema at present. After doing a few character roles in Tamil, he made his acting debut in Malayalam with the movie Premam, where he played the role of Nivin Pauley’s friend – Shambu.

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Updated: November 04, 2015