Meena in Kuselan, Simran out for good! (Page 2)

there's also Vasool Raja M.B.B.S with prabhu.

meli, have you noticed that in all the films you mentioned, kamal hassan overshadowed the other hero by a whole mile? he gets the other person to play second fiddle for him, never playing it himself. so to me, it as good as not sharing screen space with anyone.

the old film of ajith & vijay is called Rajavin Parvayil meli. ajith dies in the film though, maybe because vijay was a bigger star then the director couldn't make him die instead.

Hey Leena,

Kamal is one actor who I think gives priority to roles rather than hogging the limelight...Eg:

Quite contrary Jiggs, actually. There was news all over the place a few months ago, that Kamal approached Rajini (probly with KB in tow) with a plan of them acting together in a movie to benefit Kavithalaya, b'cos they weren't doing so well financially. The movie was supposed to be directed by Maniratnam. The news was that in fact, it was Rajini who thought it was not a good idea (based on Sivajai's huge success) and turned it down for the moment.

And Ditto, ditto, ditto to everything Suram has said.

1. Sathi Leelavathi- Equal importance was given to Ramesh Arvind

If I may add, he had Kovai Sarala play his pair (which you can't imagine any other hero do for the sake of their "image" ) and gave her more than enough acting scope and she was TERRIFIC.

2. Thenali - Jayaram had an equally good role

3. Virumaandi - Pasupathi had a very powerful role.. almost equal to Kamal

You heard back then, while this movie was a "serious" contender for the national award, there were talks about the two contenders for the best actor award as well between Pasupathy and Kamal. So you can imagine the scope that was given to Pasupathy in this one. Pasupathy who had only donned the typical fomulaiac villain roles in his previous movies, was all in praise of Kamal for giving him a role equivalent to Kamal himself, which brought forth his acting potential to mainstream cinema.

In Mumbai Express as well, Pasupathy and the other actors including Vaiyapuri got a lot of scope and we saw Pasupathy in a different shade, displaying good comic timing and sense.

4. Vetri Vizaa - Prabhu had a very nice role

5. Magalir Mattum - Nasar was the main role and Kamal comes only in the last scene

Even in Anbe Sivam Madhavan had a major role and was there with Kamal almost through out the movie.

Actually after this movie was released, there were a number of Kamal fans who complained to him about more screen space given to Madhavan, than himself. Madhavan has said in several interviews that Kamal encouraged him immensely during the shooting of this film and that he is grateful that this movie brought back his career which was hitting a slump at that time.

Not many heroes are willing to act in movies where screen space is equally shared by powerful performers!!! So I think Kamal is different that way as he is not intimidated by the presence of another hero.

What I like about his movies are that the other characters are also noticable and get recognized for their performance.

Exactly!! You don't see many front-runners doing this kind of thing at all. Even Ajith when he was asked if he would do a movie with Vijay, he diplomatically said that there's no need for such a thing in Tamil movies for 2 big actors to be in the same movie, b'cos their fans expect something different from each star and their expectations cannot be fulfilled, when the stars share screen space in the same movie.

My 2 cents

Now, let's make that 4