Don khaki for success, says Malayalam director Vinayan

Ernakulam, June 2 (IANS): A khaki uniform - that is what a director is prescribing as the key to stardom for a young actor in the Malayalam film industry.

The actor is Prithviraj, who was considered the new hope of Malayalam cinema a couple of years ago but is still struggling to find his bearings at the box office. And the director is Vinayan.

If we look at the chequered career of the star son - Prithviraj's mother being actress Mallika and father being late actor Sukumaran - who took up acting when he was on vacation from an Australian University where he was doing graduate course in IT, he has failed to create a niche for himself.

Of the dozen or more films he has appeared in, the audience has accepted only a few, with the credit for their success going to others.

His first hit "Nadanam" was a female-oriented film, and so his co-star Navya Nair walked away with all the accolades. "Swapnakoodu", in which he played a rich, spoilt brat with negative traits, was a multi-starrer and its success was mainly attributed to the songs filmed in Austria.

And the latest is Vinayan's "Vellinakshatram", a ghost story where Prithviraj portrays the role of a bespectacled single father to four-year-old Taruni Sachdev.

The attraction of this film is said to be the work of the child artiste and the special effects.

But Prithviraj's directors have not lost faith in him. Vinayan, who has signed the actor for his next venture "Satyam", where Prithviraj has to play an arrogant cop, claims the film will change the fortunes of the actor.

Says Vinayan: "Look at the history of Malayalam films. Every actor who has achieved superstardom has done so only after playing an arrogant police officer." He was referring to stars like Mamootty and Suresh Gopi.