Chennai is celebrating its Avengers connection with AR Rahman, Vijay Sethupathi and Andrea. While the Oscar winner has composed a song for the upcoming Avengers: Endgame, the actors have lent their voices to the Tamil version of the film.
But the Avengers franchise has had a Chennai link even before this through Ravi Shankar, a popular dubbing artiste who has been the Tamil voice for Iron Man in all the films so far.
“I’ve been receiving a lot of calls over the last few days asking if I was the original voice for Iron Man. As a dubbing artiste, it is very satisfying to know that there are so many fans for my voice,” beams Ravi.
Dubbing artiste Ravi Shankar
Baby steps
Ravi has a funny story to narrate every time someone asks him about the first film he dubbed for. His father Devanarayanan was dubbing for a film, and required a baby’s cry for a sequence. “My father was home then, and I was a six-month-old baby. My mother still jokes that he pinched me that day to make me cry and record that particular sequence,” he laughs.
Ravi was born into a family of dubbing artistes — his grandfather Kolathu Iyer dubbed for a film titled RamRajya for AVM Productions. His father Devanarayanan assisted him back then and went on to become one of the most established dubbing artistes in the industry. Devanarayanan has also worked on the Tamil dialogues in big Kamal Haasan films including Salangai Oli and Kuruthipunal , among others, besides being the Tamil voice for Telugu superstar Nageshwara Rao. “He was an all-rounder in the film industry; he even composed songs,” recalls Ravi. It was during one such film that Ravi started his journey as an assistant. His first outing on his own was the Hariharan-starrer Pookal Vidum Thoothu, and he hasn’t looked back since. “I got noticed during the release of Baasha ; I lent voice to Rajini’s brother. I worked on Suresh Krissna’s Aaha and Sangamam as well.” His voice was being noticed in Kollywood and slowly, bigger offers came to him. According to him, one of his most special outings was dubbing for Abbas in Gautham Menon’s Minnale . “It is still close to my heart and Gautham Menon gave me a lot of space to perform in the dubbing studio,” he says. Ravi has another Abbas connect — he dubbed for him in Rajinikanth’s Padayappa as well. “Do you remember the ‘what a man’ dialogue,” he asks.
The English link
His Hollywood link kickstarted with The Mummy , in which he was Brendan Fraser’s voice. “A lot of people liked my voice for lead characters; I got opportunities to lend my voice for top heroes in English films,” he says. Subsequently, he also landed opportunities for Hindi to Tamil dubbed projects; Ravi is Hrithik Roshan’s Tamil voice in films like Krrish and Dhoom .
Ravi’s Avengers connection started in 2008, and he calls it a “happy journey”. He says, “Back then, they had a voice audition and I sent mine to Hollywood as well. Fortunately, mine was selected for Iron Man, and ever since the first film, I’ve had a lot of pleasant experiences in the projects so far .” There are many challenges as well, and one of them is to get the Tamil dialogues right. This is where the job of a screenwriter comes to the fore, and Ravi says that he has been fortunate to get some experienced and creative people working on his films. “ Also, Hollywood plans well in advance. The makers mention everything in the dubbing sheet, even local slang spoken by the characters. When that happens, we adapt it in Tamil, in accordance to local sensibilities. The job of a screenwriter is crucial to this process of writing the English dialogues in Tamil — especially because we don’t relate to the skin colour of the Hollywood hero.”
Ravi has got acting offers but has steered clear of them till date. “All I want to do is improve my dubbing skills, and remain in this profession for the rest of my life,” he signs off.
