When the stills of the 2008-film Vaaranam Aayiram were released, Atharvaa Murali was in school. A fat, lazy kid back then, he gazed at that film’s hero, Suriya, and his chiselled six-pack body. He wondered if he would ever get anywhere close.
That was when his dad, late actor Murali, used to pester him to work out. “I hated it,” he recalls, “He used to wake up me at 6 a.m. and ask me to do leg exercises; just because he was doing it.”
Over time, Atharvaa got interested. After a few films in the Tamil industry, he was roped in to play an athlete for an upcoming film and he recalled that day, when he had looked at those six-pack pictures of Suriya. “I was inspired; I wanted to look the part of an athlete and started working out vigorously.”
Now, Atharvaa — whose Irumbu Kuthirai hits screens just yesterday — sports a six-pack and is proud to flaunt it.
“After Paradesi , which released last year, I wanted to do something really interesting. That’s when Irumbu Kuthirai came along. Simultaneously, a script titled Eeti too came, in which I was supposed to play an athlete. I mentally decided that to look the part, a six-pack body would be ideal.”
It wasn’t easy. It was a year of getting up at 4 a.m. and working out for two hours, before heading out to shoot. “Sometimes, during the last year, there were night shoots too,” he says, “It was tough during those times, but, I knew I had to keep at it.”
That he did, along with a strict diet of natural food. “My first meal would be at four in the morning,” he reveals, “And after six in the evening, I wouldn’t eat at all. In the day, whenever I ate, it was always steamed and boiled stuff. I was off cooked food for a year and I felt that that actually kept me healthy.”
For Atharvaa, films somehow happened ; he wanted to become a pilot initially. “Whenever I flew around the country and abroad, the respect and aura that pilots got impressed me,” he reminisces , “I wanted to earn that too. But slowly, I realised that my calling was elsewhere.”
So, did he zero in on acting because he was a famous star’s son? “Not at all,” he says, “Though I didn’t want to be an actor, I was obsessed with films. I just wasn’t confident about myself.” Being Murali’s son, scripts kept coming to him but Atharvaa would mostly be disinterested. “There was this day when we were at the dinner table — it was just after I’d finished school — and appa wanted to know what I planned to do with life. I said I was interested in acting, but wasn’t confident. He took me to a stunt choreographer for classes and that’s how things fell in place.”
Ten days after his debut film as hero — Baana Kathadi — released, his father passed away, leaving the family in shock. “I went blank,” he rues, “ Baana had just released, my sister had just got engaged…it was all happiness then. But after he passed away, I didn’t know what to do, who to go to. People start telling you so many things that I didn’t know what to believe.”
He believes that his dad would be proud to see him doing well and sporting a six-pack now. “Being Murali’s son was both a blessing and a burden. I could get into the industry easily but sustaining was a big challenge. The first couple of films were always compared to my father’s work. I took the feedback positively and worked on it,” he says.
What’s the one advice of his father’s that still rings in his ears? “He wasn’t the kind to advice us much but the one thing he’s always told me is to be alert to what’s happening around you.”
That still seems to hold good for the young actor — even now, his pilot dreams aren’t on hold, he insists. “I’ve always been ambitious,” he says, “Even if I get a six-month break, I’d definitely go back to it; I’d probably get a license to fly.”
Bagging a lead role in critically-acclaimed filmmaker Bala’s Paradesi worked to his favour. “It made people realise that I could act. Audiences have started looking up to me as an actor after Paradesi .”
It was smooth sailing for the actor after that. “I’ve never looked at my work as ‘commercial’ and ‘critical’. I look at it as art and entertainment. With the art side being fulfilled with Bala’s film, I decided I should branch out to entertainers”
With upcoming films Irumbu Kuthirai , Eeti and Kanithan , he plans to do exactly that. And, his muscular body could well kick-start the six-pack trend yet again with the younger crop of heroes in Kollywood.
