Stardom to side role: what happened to Prithviraj?

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 11 (IANS): Why is Prithviraj, who has done several lead roles in Malayalam, doing a minor negative role in a Tamil film?

Prithviraj - son of late actor Sukumaran and actress Mallika - was on a vacation from his engineering course in Australia when filmmaker Renjith offered him the role of Manu in "Nandanam".

His role in "Nandanam" was similar to what he was in real life and his performance was received well.

Offers poured in and he was hailed as the next best thing that had happened to Malayalam cinema after Mohanlal and Mammootty. He was also described as the next super star.

Even though most of his films did not do well at the box office, he became a craze in campuses where students had already started looking at Mohanlal and Mammootty as 'uncles'.

Four years down the lane, things are not working for Prthviraj the way it was expected.

The young star does not have a single Malayalam film on hand except Vinayan's new film.

What went against him seems to be his defiance of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes' (AMMA) decision to boycott producers when the relations between producers and artistes were strained. Prithviraj had shot a Vinayan film, "Satyam". Senior artistes seem to have construed this as arrogance.

Whether there was a move to isolate him professionally or not is unclear, but offers dried off for him. He was replaced by other actors in four important films.

One film he sorely lost was Kamal's "Perumazhakkalam" that has two heroines and two heroes. Meera Jasmine and Kavya Madhavan portray two important female roles. When Kamal booked Dileep, Prthiviraj, who had already blocked his dates for the film, backed out of the project thinking the role had gone to Dileep.

But Kamal maintains that Dileep was booked for a role meant for him not Prithviraj's.

The role eventually went to Vineet. The result: he lost a good role in a good director's film.

Then, he was supposed to act in Amrutham directed by Sibi Malayil and Sabu Cyril's first directorial venture to be produced by 'Maniyanpilla' Raju. Not any more.

He was also expected to do a major role in Priyanandan's "Athu Mandaara Poovalla". Priyanandan is a director who had won several awards for his debut film, "Neythukaran".