Vikram is not just a very skilled and dedicated actor from Tamil cinema. His ability to slip into different characters at the cost of his health, wealth, and mental equilibrium has rapidly earned him the reputation of being a formidable performing force in Indian cinema.
In a throwback interview from 2015, he spoke to Subhash K Jha about pan-India success. “A recent development regarding my Tamil films is that their reach stopped being restricted to Tamil Nadu. My Tamil films began to be appreciated in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Karnataka. I think this trend started with Anniyan in 2005. It was dubbed into Hindi as Aparichit. I feel it would have worked much better in Hindi if it had been made as an independent Hindi film and not a dubbed film. That’s what we’ve done with I.”
About playing traumatized characters repeatedly, Vikram has said, “I don’t know why! Even when I did Deiva Thirumagal, where I played a man with a child’s mind, it was the director A.L Vijay who insisted I play the character. He made other films and waited for me to do this film. Likewise, Shankar wanted me to do I. And I love doing roles that challenge me emotionally and physically. Though I enjoy doing masala film like Gemini I still try to being in a performance even when I am doing something not so out of the box. The others were easy enough.”
Adding, the transformation for I was challenging, “But Shankar’s I was really tough. It wasn’t the weight loss that was tough. It was seventeen hours of staying in prosthetics every day…That was harrowing. I went through the experience of being in unrecognizable prosthetics for a whole year. People who worked with me couldn’t recognize me. When I began to lose weight, I had to cut myself off from social interaction because people began asking too many questions. Cycling 15 kms and work-out for an hour in the morning, work-out for another hour in the evening. Then I had ten small meals every day…. egg-white, half an apple…My 22-year-old friend, with a fantastic physique, helped me with my diet. To do this for 2 ½ year years left me looking very strange. People started asking questions about my health. Going anywhere became difficult. Meeting relatives and friends became impossible. So I just cut myself off. Even my wife grew very concerned. I’d get very angry with their worries. This is my job! Do I ask lawyer what he does in the courtroom. Let me be! I’d do anything for a role. It’s such a privilege to have filmmakers trusting me with these roles. I feel Shankar Sir is my God for giving me this role. Any actor, when he sees this, will say, ‘Shit, why didn’t I do this role?’ When I did the role, I thought of nothing except to give this role my best. I knew what I was getting into. Right now, I am young, and I can afford to play around with my body and looks. Later, I’ll be unable to take up the challenge. I’d be the first one to reach the sets and the last one to leave. People from the crew would sometimes fail to recognize me. Amy Fernandes, my costar, saw me in the gym one day and couldn’t recognize me without the prosthetics. When I said hi, she turned around and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s you, Kenny! You are looking good.’ I was bald and extra thin. But she had seen me constantly in that other grotesque prosthetic makeup on the sets. So she found me looking good (laughs). I was actually looking pathetic.”
About the actors Vikram admires, he revealed, “Look at Mr Amitabh Bachchan he went away and came back to play older roles. And look at the roles he does. I’d love to handle my career the way Mr Bachchan does. I like different actors for different things. I like Salman Khan for the way he carries himself. His aura and self-confidence are fantastic. I love what he did in Tere Naam , which was a remake of my Sethu. He‘s a close friend. When I went to his home, the only trophy he had in his living room was that of Tere Naam. I like Mr Kamal Haasan’s daring choice of roles. During school and college I modelled my life on him. I was so much in awe of him. I used to do my scenes like him until I did Sethu. I made a conscious decision to move away from Kamal Haasan’s influence.”
About succeeding in Hindi cinema, Vikram had said, “It isn’t really important. I have an audience in the South. Initially, when I went to Mumbai and nobody recognized me, it disturbed me. But now I am beyond that feeling of being left out. In fact, it’s a relief to be left alone in Mumbai. Recognition doesn’t matter anymore. But I am fascinated by the scripts and subjects like Rang De Basanti, Wake Up Sid and Barfi, almost every film of Ranbir Kapoor in Hindi.”
