K Balachander: Firm on ground, he launched stars

K Balachander helmed nearly 80 movies, but he also gave direction to a number of wannabe heroes, moulding them into actors rather than stars. The fact that a large number of them — Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Prakash Raj, and Sathyaraj -- went on to become superstars in the industry was to him just the sequel.
In 1973, for instance, he made ‘Arangetram’, which had Kamal Haasan in his first major role as an adult actor.Two years later, Balachander gave Rajnikanth his first role in a Tamil movie – as a villain in ‘Apoorva Raagangal’. As for Prakash Raj, Balachander launched him in ‘Duet’ in 1994, and even had him change his name from Prakash Rai to Raj.
“Balachander came from the world of theatre and so he was always on a talent hunt and not a star hunt,” says filmmaker K Hariharan, director of creative sciences at Mahindra Ecole Central, Hyderabad.
“The reason that KB sir needed to find real talent was because he knew that his scripts were unconventional. KB made his movies on very low budgets and he knew they would be hits only if his actors could carry off their roles. That was why he sought thinking actors, and he would almost always find them on stage,” says Hariharan, who worked with Balachander on several occasions. “And that was how the ‘KB school of acting’ got started. He did not want people to ‘act’ like him, but bring their own talent to the role,” he adds.
“He would do commercial parallel nonstar cinema, but always non-star cinema, which was why he needed to cast talented actors,” says Mohan Raman, who is among the actors launched by Balachander.
Actor ‘Delhi’ Ganesh, who was a theatre artiste until he was spotted by Balachander and introduced in the movie ‘Pattana Pravesham’ (1976), which was a big hit, says that the director always appreciated talent, wherever he saw it. “If it was one of his actors on screen doing a good job, he would clap hard at the end of the shoot to show his appreciation. If it was a new director in the industry, he would write him a note if he liked his movie,” says Ganesh, who after the Balachander launch in 1976, went on to act in more than 400 films and TV serials.
“Whenever I told him that he was the one who helped me get where I am in cinema because he gave me a chance to act, he would say, ‘You always had the talent. It was my luck that I spotted it first. If not me, someone else would have. Because you cannot keep real talent hidden for long’,” says Ganesh.