Superstar Rajnikanth turns 63 today. He was born on 12th December 1950, in Bangalore. His parents Ramoji Rao Gaikwad and Jijabai named him as Shivaji Rao. He was the youngest of four siblings – two brothers and a sister. Rajni got his first acting gig in 1975 through a Tamil film ‘Apoorva Raagangal’. The film directed by K Balachander saw Kamal Haasan in lead role and Rajni relatively played a small role in it and continued to do movies in all south Indian languages mostly in negative roles. In 1977, filmmaker S P Muthuraman turned his image from negative to positive image by casting him in the male lead role in ‘Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri’. Later the film industry saw as many as 25 films in this combination.
Rajnikanth gained a large amount of attention through a critical acclaimed role in 1978 ‘Mullum Malarum’. From then onwards there is no stopping of him with a long list of several super duper hits like ‘Billa’, ‘Thillu Mullu’, ‘Moondru Mugam’, ‘Thalapathi’, ‘Annamalai;, ‘Baashha’, ‘Muthu’, ‘Padayappa’, ‘Chandramukhi’, ‘Shivajii’ ‘Enthiran’, etc.
He earned the charismatic image of ‘Superstar’ mainly with a sense of his unique styles like walking, wearing goggles, lighting cigarette and dance moves apart from his punch dialogues. He earned a huge fanfare in Japan, U.K, South Africa and many parts of the world. However, in reality Rajnikanth is the most simple man and a strong believer of spirituality. He married Latha Rangachari, a playback singer and film producer and the couple have two daughters Aishwarya and Soundarya, who are presently into movie-making. His forthcoming film ‘Kochadaiyaan’ which is being shot with motion capture 3D format is directed by his younger daughter Soundarya and the film is expected to be released in several Indian as well as foreign languages in April 2013.
Marking his birthday today (12.12.12), which is considered as very special, ‘Shivaji 3D’ was released worldwide as gift to all Rajni fans. So all Rajni fans and moviegoers, celebrate the superstar’s birthday by watching ‘Shivaji 3D’ on the big screen.
Happy Birthday Superstar Rajnikanth!
