To be a hero, there has to be a villain. Sandalwood, at least in its prime, never faced the dearth of quality villains during the golden era when legendary actors such as matinee idol Dr Rajkumar, Dr Vishnuvardhan, Shankar Nag, and others ruled the roost. The most prominent villains – K D Nagappa, Ranga, Balakrishna, M P Shankar, Vajramuni, Sudarshan, Shakthi Prasad (father of Arjun Sarja), Lokesh, Sundar Krishna Urs, Ambareesh, Tiger Prabhakar, Thoogudeepa Srinivas (father of Challenging Star Darshan), Sudheer, Musuri Krishnamurthy, Dheerendra Gopal, Devaraj, Doddanna, Mukhya Mantri Chandru, Jai Jagadeesh, Avinash, Sobhraj, and many more have been the good baddies. With the change in trend, more villains are being imported for star projects and Bengaluru Chronicle reports on the imported and stylish villains.
While Ravi Shankar is undoubtedly the present star villain with great demand, the new directors are opting for a change while choosing the best from neighbouring industries. One among the first after Amrish Puri, and several veterans who played a ‘rare’ villain in Kannada films, it was Ashish Vidyrati who has been more regular in Kannada films. Till then, it was only the actresses who were in demand to act alongside the star heroes for huge budget films.
Kabir Duhan Singh:
The latest to join the bandwagon is the model-turned-actor Kabir, who was in news for some time for his Sandalwood debut. The actor who has grown popular with several hits in Telugu and Tamil movies, will be seen in Hebbuli along with two other baddies – Ravi Shankar and Sampath Raj.
Vikram Singh:
Another model-turned-actor, the villain in Tiger Shroff's debut venture Heropanti, made his sandalwood venture opposite power star Puneeth Rajkumar.
Daniel Balaji:
The Tamil actor who made it big playing the antagonist role, made his Kannada debut in Kirataka, an important milestone in Rocking Star Yash’s career. Thereafter he has appeared in Shivajinagar and then in Dove.
Makarand Deshpande:
The versatile actor was featured in Dandupalya and played the role of Krishna, the dreaded member of the Dandupalya gang. He later appeared in three more projects.
While there are many more who are in the pipeline including Deepak in Srikanta, sandalwood has its doors open for the best baddies around.
