Have we ever seen S. J. Suryah dance on screen with as much gay abandon as he does in trailer of Iraivi ?
Suryah himself is surprised with what he’s able to achieve as an actor under Karthik Subbaraj’s direction. “It was a great experience working with such a fresh team. I like how Karthik Subbaraj sir extracted performances from all of us. He lets us be in our zone and then takes what he wants. Even we don’t quite know what is being captured. I felt a change in me during shooting: I’d become mellower. That’s when I knew I was in good hands,” says Suryah, and insists that Karthik deserves to be called ‘sir’ despite the age difference between them “because he’s a pro. He is a trendsetter, and has showed that it is possible to shoot digitally on a limited budget and still make it work at the box office. Karthik sir is a revolutionary.”
Suryah, a successful director himself, hasn’t had the same success as a hero, but was it difficult for him not to play captain on the sets of Iraivi? “I do what my designation demands. As an actor, my duty is to make my director happy,” he says.
On the progression of his acting career, Suryah says he got stereotyped as an actor. “Though New and Anbe Aaruyire dealt with adult themes, I knew how to handle it. Others, sadly, felt I would suit only those kind of roles. Those films flopped, and I was forced to take a long break to recoup,” he says. It helped that “I was a bachelor and could afford to do it.”During that four-year-long break, Suryah refused direction offers, acting chances, and potentially crores in remuneration. During this time, he wrote some scripts, learnt music, and then prepped for Isai, his comeback film. “I enjoyed the space I was in. We may dictate our terms to life sometimes, but at some others, we must just listen.”
He’s glad Karthik chose him. “Karthik sir’s choice shows his faith in me. That’s my success as an actor.” It means much for Suryah who turned director and producer, only so he could become an actor. ““I’ve done a lot of things—composing, directing, singing, distributing, producing—and I’ve done justice to all those roles. But being an actor delights me the most.”Suryah’s next doing Selvaraghavan’s Nenjam Marappadhillai; he is also teaming up with Telugu superstar Pawan Kalyan after Khushi and Puli to direct a film. For now, Suryah says his main task is to win back the “good reputation” he had, and “always remain a student of cinema.”
