From 'Yajamana' to 'Chaarulatha': Kannada films which had the best portrayal of dual roles

Acting in itself is a complex art which requires a person to completely transform into the character they are playing. Artists do a lot of background work when they take up an acting assignment, reading up on the character, its traits and habits and internalizing them. However it is still relatively easier to perform an act when a person has to carry forward the same characteristics throughout the script of the film or play. When artists play more than one roles in the same film, it’s a different ball game altogether as it requires them to quickly switch from one character to another and that can be pretty disorienting. Today, we look at some Kannada films from 'Yajamana' to 'Chaarulatha', which had actors giving their best at playing dual roles.

‘Yajamana’ was one of the biggest hits in the career of Dr.Vishnuvardhan. It was the remake of the 2000 Tamil film ‘Vanathai Pola’. Yajamana was a family-based story which ran successfully at theatres in 2019. It stood as one of the highest-grossing movies in Sandalwood at the time. Vishnuvardhan played the role of a son as well as his father in the movie which was directed by R Sheshadri and Radha Bharathi.

‘Shankar Guru’ was a 1978 film starring Dr Rajkumar in a triple role along with Kanchana, Jayamala and Padmapriya. This movie was very well received in Kannada. The song ‘The Love me or hate me’ became a super hit and created a huge buzz in the industry back then. The film is about a man who gets separated from his family and gets caught up in a criminal case. Just like in Kannada, the film was a super hit in Hindi and Tamil too. Amitabh Bachchan acted in the Hindi version while Sivaji Ganesan played the role played by Dr Rajkumar in the original for the Tamil version.

The dual role in the film was played by Dr Vishnuvardhan. This movie was about a murder of a cop played by Vishnuvardhan. When his father finds Vishnuvardhan’s look-alike, he plans to avenge his son’s death. The film was directed by V Somashekar in the year 1980.

‘Diggajaru’, which was released in 2001, was directed by D Rajendra Babu. It starred Vishnuvardhan in dual roles of Chikkaiah and Muddaiah. ‘Diggajaru’ was a movie based on friendship. Ambareesh, who plays the role of a landlord in the film, has a friendly relationship with his worker and is even ready to sacrifice his life for him. The worker’s role is played by Vishnuvardhan and he plays the dual role of father and son in the film. The songs in the movie created a huge buzz at the time of the film’s release.

‘Sri Ramachandra’ was a 1992 romantic Kannada movie directed by D Rajendra Babu. The film starred Ravichandran, who played a dual role for the first time in his career. The movie was about twins who were split at a very young age because of their parent's divorce, and how they came together.

‘Chaarulatha’ was a multilingual horror film produced in Kannada and Tamil, directed by Pon Kumaran starring multi-language star Priyamani in the lead and dual roles. The story was about conjoined twin girls, one of whom falls in love with a boy and the mother decided to separate the twins by surgery. During the operation, one of them dies and turns into an evil ghost and starts troubling the other one. This movie became super hit in both Kannada and Tamil. Later, it was dubbed in Malayalam and Telugu.