Kamal Haasan Turns 72 on November 7: From Child Star to Tamil Cinema's Great Experimenter

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Kamal Haasan was born on November 7, 1954, so he turns 72 next week. He started as a child actor in Kalathur Kannamma in 1960, a performance that won him the President's gold medal, and he has worked in cinema ever since. That is more than six decades.

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What I admire is how restless he is. He has acted, written, directed, produced, sung and choreographed. Apoorva Raagangal, Moondram Pirai, Nayakan, Indian and Vikram are all very different films, and he is at the centre of each. Nayakan, with Mani Ratnam directing, regularly shows up on lists of the best Indian films, and it was named in Time magazine's 2005 list of the all-time 100 films.

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His interest in makeup and transformation is famous. Avvai Shanmughi, Dasavatharam and Indian are all examples where he plays multiple looks or ages. Not every experiment has worked, and some of the later films were divisive. But I would rather watch an actor try something unusual than repeat himself.

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He has also been honoured by the government, with the Padma Shri in 1990 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He entered politics in 2018 by founding a party, and he has remained a public figure outside cinema as well.

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Which Kamal Haasan film would you recommend to a first-time viewer? Mine would be Moondram Pirai, mostly for the final scene, which I will not spoil.