Sriram Raghavan

Sriram Raghavan Biography

Sriram Raghavan is a noted director and screenwriter of Bollywood. As a film director, his movies include – Ek hasina thi, Agent Vinod and Johnny Gaddar. His upcoming project, Happy Birthday is a fantasy film produced by Ramesh Sippy and stars Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in leading roles. Among all his movies, Johny Gaddar is the critically acclaimed movie. Agent Vinod received mixed responses and did good business as well, though it was not a major success. Johnny Gaddar was a sleeper hit and later remade to south Indian languages like Telugu and Malayalam. This movie was dedicated to legendary Indian Cinema director Vijay Anand and writer James Hadley Chase.

Sriram was born in Chennai in the year 1953. His father is a botanist and mother, a housewife. He spent his childhood days in Pune. His schooling was also done at Pune. He worked in Stardust magazine for a while, but he was not at all interested. Later he studied at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Rajkumar Hirani was his batch mate at FTII. Hirani edited Sriram’s The Eight Column Affair, the diploma film, which later won National Film Award in 1987. He made a documentary Raman Raghav after his diploma course in FTII. He worked on this project aside Raghuvir Yadav.

Ram Gopal Varma, impressed by his work in Raman Raghav offered him the movie to direct – Ek hasina thi. The movie played Saif Ali Khan and Urmila in lead roles. Actually Saif played negative role in this movie, perhaps his first movie in villain’s role. The movie and its theme were later inspired for super hit Malayalam movie, 22 Female Kottayam. Though it was not a huge hit, both his and Urmila’s works were appreciated.

Johny Gaddar was the debut movie of Neil Mukesh which turned out to be a surprise hit in the year 2007. The movie offered multiple tributes to many film legends like Vijay Anand, Dharmendra and James Hadley Chase. He has also presented in a nice way, many hit Bollywood movies in small bits. Agent Vinod starred Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor in leading roles. Actually he wanted the lead actor of 1977 movie, Mahendra Sandhu to do a cameo appearance in this movie. But when Sandhu was not willing to do the role, he offered a tribute to the original by mentioning his name in one of the dialogues delivered by Saif.

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Updated: January 28, 2014