'Would've died in auto rickshaw': Meet actor, who worked as barber to 'insult' his mother, now among biggest Indian superstars, his name is...

Born as Parthasarathy Srinivasan, Kamal Haasan is one of the biggest superstars and finest actors in Indian cinema. Besides working in Tamil cinema majorly, he has also acted in a few Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and Bengali movies. Haasan considers filmmaker K Balachander as his mentor and in a recent interview, he stated that he would've died with his "angst and unfulfilled dreams" in an auto rickshaw, if not for the late Tamil playwright, producer, screenwriter, and actor.

Talking to The Hollywood Reporter India, Kamal said, "The person who told me that my best match would be Mr Balachander was another guru of mine, he was a barber, and he taught me barbering. I worked as a barber at a salon, but that was mostly to taunt my mother, because she thought that I was doing nothing. I was reading paperbacks and watching cinema, and she said that this isn’t what I should be doing. The kind of talent I had, I didn’t find work easily. I thought about what would insult my mother, and I became a barber."

The Vikram actor added that when he was 19, he told Balachander that he wanted to become a director, but the filmmaker firmly discouraged him. He warned the young Kamal that choosing that path would leave him spending his life riding in auto rickshaws. Instead, Balachander was the first to suggest that Kamal had the potential to become a movie star. 

"Forget riding an auto rickshaw, I would’ve probably died in one had I not taken his advice. That’s how I decided to totally go into acting. If I had made that mistake, he would’ve been right. I’ve seen many of my friends die like that. That is why I am grateful to Mr Balachander, because I could’ve gone down that route. I would’ve died with my angst, with my unfulfilled dreams, in an auto rickshaw. And nobody would know that there is a dead body in the auto rickshaw", the multiple National Award-winning actor said.

On the work front, Kamal Haasan will be seen next in Thug Life. The Mani Ratnam directorial also stars Silambarasan TR, Trisha, Aishwarya Lekshmi,  Ashok Selvan, Abhirami, Joju George, Nasser, Mahesh Manjrekar, Sanya Malhotra and Ali Fazal. The AR Rahman musical is slated to release in cinemas on June 5.

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