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After the struggle, success

The man who humours the crowd now has the plot

REINVENTING HIMSELF After a rib-tickling career Sunil tries some hip shaking with Aarti Agarwal

"Things never come to me easily, I have failed umpteen times and the success today is what has come to me after a long struggle of 15 years," says Sunil an extremely affable and pleasing comedian of Telugu cinema. Sunil's candid self-assessment, off-screen, bowls you over as much as his on-screen performances do, where he has come a long way from his early side kick image to being an Andala Ramudu.

In town attending the shooting of Stalin, Sunil was at ease and obviously excited about the initial reports of Andala Ramudu. "In this film, the character is the hero. No hero suits this role because one needs a man with inane, innocent and funny looks and I fitted the bill. In fact I was scared to take up this role and wanted to get into Venu Madhav's shoes. My original choice for hero's role was Ravi Teja. It's perfectly okay to entertain audiences for 20 minutes in a film but it's a Herculean task to make your magic work and keep the people glued to their seats for two and a half hours. You don't know if they can take your face for so long."

Sunil recollects the emotional turmoil he underwent all through the making of the film. He says, "When Aarti was hospitalised, the first day was traumatic. We even went scouting for DVDs of her old songs to see if her lip-synching can help complete the film. But the lady is so strong-willed, she bounced back and helped us finish the film. The film is about her especially the entire climax revolves around her, I'm just her shadow."

Compliment him for those energetic and near perfect dances and Sunil reveals, "I owe this to Chiranjeevi, I just watched him dance and learnt the steps. Just before the release I showed it to him and he was all praise for me. I always wanted to dance and I finally did it for this particular film. I'm happy that even people who are remotely connected with this film have come to see it and encourage me and eventually all those positive vibes helped. I'm indebted to Nagarjuna who helped me in the last couple of days adjusting his time because I was shooting for three films simultaneously and my best friend Trivikram who stood by me always."

Sunil's advice for aspirants trying to make it in the industry is to allow themselves every possible opportunity to achieve success. "There's no (set) procedure to follow and if you are talented and but not good looking give yourself enough time, it will be tough but you are going to succeed. That's why you have to give it a fair shot."

Y. SUNITA CHOWDHARY

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