Actor Vinayakan, who bagged the best actor award the other day, is known to keep his distance from the media. Even on his day of joy, he barely gave a quote or two and shied away from media interviews. But on Thursday morning, he broke the ice and appeared in front of the media to answer questions. One of the first questions was about the social media campaign in his favour, on the days leading upto the awards. “I feel it is part of the protest of youth,” he says. “Though I do not know what the main reason behind this protest is.” He makes it clear that he was the last person who expected this award. “I was not thinking about this. It was hardly just 10 minutes before the government announced the award that I thought about it. It is only now that I have started feeling the real thrill of being an award winner,” he says, adding that his feeling was akin to a dance of happiness.
The actor, who used to do stage shows with his dance troupe, before entering films, is now thinking about doing choreography for the films. “You know, while the remuneration for our troupe was Rs 2,000, we used to spend Rs 10,000 on costumes which could not be used again. So I stopped doing such shows. Now I will definitely do choreography for films.” Interestingly, Vinayakan was one of the music directors of Rajeev Ravi’s Kammattipadam. “When Rajeev told me about this project, I asked him for a chance to do a song. So he narrated a situation and gave me the reference. He liked the track I composed, which had lyrics given by Anwar Ali. Now I am getting calls to compose songs. I have set a tune for a song in Raffi’s new film Role Models and one song for Ordinary fame Sugeeth’s next. Apart from these, I am composing four songs for yet another project,” he says.
On essaying negative roles, he feels it is relatively easy to execute. “We have enough freedom, while doing villain roles. We can be flexible. But I have reduced doing films in Telugu, because of accidents. The main reason is that if we go for six days’ shoot there, the whole schedule we will be shooting fight sequences,” he laughs. Vinayakan is happy as he got congratulatory calls from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and superstar Mohanlal. On his media-shy nature, he says, “I used to assess the actor in me. I did not feel that I had done enough to come in front of the media. But now that I have been recognised, I thought I would come forward.” Will he turn more selective while choosing roles? “Definitely not, because I do not have that many offers. Just think, how many films released during last 15 years had me in the cast list?”
