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Drop-dead gorgeous

HARD-WORKING HUNK Ganesh Venkataraman is high on happiness

He’s cool and confident. Standing tall at 6 ft with drop-dead looks, Ganesh Venkataraman is all set to give our Telugu film heroes a complex.

An insignificant debut in Angrez is something he would like to forget, but Aakasamantha that released last week is the most memorable grab of 2009. Ganesh’s resume never seems to end, he is the Gladrags Mr India winner for the year 2003, he represented India at the Best Model of the World pageant at Turkey where he was among the top five and won the title for Best Smile.

After Angrez released, Ganesh was not in a hurry to sign films, he was sure he did not want to be branded as a cross-over actor and looked for a proper commercial break.

He used the gap to hone his skills, did theatre, TV shows, bumping into director Radha Mohan in Mumbai through a casting director. That’s how he landed the role of a sardar in Abhiyum Naanum which was largely re-shot in Telugu as Aakasamantha.

Ganesh remembers seeing 800 artistes, nearly half of the television industry present there, for the audition and heard the filmmakers scouted all metros for the challenging role.

He says, “Radha Mohan told me I was supposed to play the young Manmohan Singh, an economist, a man of few words and dignity and above all someone who is humane in character.”

The actor adds that it was the first time a Telugu heroine was dating a sardar on screen. The audience was as shocked as Prakash Raj, who played the dad on screen.

He says Prakash Raj is a fabulous actor and Trisha started modelling around the same time as him.

He quips, “The chemistry is evident, a lot of happiness translates itself on screen, we would rehearse scenes in Munnar, Ooty and it was a great working experience.”

Does he believe in the adage mama’s boy and papa’s daughter? Ganesh replies, “I have an elder sister and I can relate to it, especially the heartache that my dad went through when she got married.

I think it means a lot when the son-in-law tells the girl’s father that no one can take his place and that he can trust the new man in the family and she will be in safe hands.”

Ganesh narrates an interesting experience about how he bagged this role. “After meeting the director, I went to my friend, wore a turban , sported a beard, learnt a few mannerisms and mugged a few lines on how one greets and introduces themselves. The next day I enacted with costume et al and after five minutes spoke in chaste Tamil, told the director that I had met him the previous day, he was shocked.”

That wasn’t all, Ganesh did a lot of home work for the role. He visited a gurdwara, grew a beard for 40 days, studied sardars and their attitude, their body language etc before he faced the camera. Ganesh adds many people in TFI don’t know how he looks as he covered his hair with a turban.

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