Suraj Venjarammoodu, second Malayali comedian to win National Award

Suraj Venjarammoodu, who shared this year’s national award for best actor with Rajkummar Rao, is the second comedian in Malayalam cinema to win the honour in recent times. The previous one was Salim Kumar in 2010, who too had shared the award with another actor (Kolaveri Di fame Dhanush). What’s more, both began as mimicry artists and started their film careers in comedy roles before graduating to essaying solemn and serious characters. [caption id=“attachment_1483197” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Wikipedia[/caption] Malayalam online and TV media was abuzz the entire day with advance information that Suraj is likely to be considered for the award and that he had reached the final round of selection. They even telecast live Suraj and his colleagues watching the press conference by the award committee in anticipation of him winning the title. He appeared joyous, thankful and relieved. He said, he wanted to dedicate the award to Malayalam cinema and Malayalam language. The movie that won him the honour was “Perayariyathavar” (The nameless), reportedly a film on conservancy workers, by an award winning art-house director Dr. Biju. As an actor, the honour means an incredible transformation for Suraj because till recently he was an inevitable comedy element in mainstream Malayalam films. Most of his roles fell into the crass comedy category and were repetitive. Of late, he has been picking up serious roles and in no time bagged the national award. Other than Salim Kumar and Suraj, most of the national award winners from Malayalam cinema have been serious actors - both in art-house as well as mainstream movies.