Kollywood's Mr. Unbearable

Claim to fame – Pioneered new breed of ‘Sleaze Quotient’ in Kollywood

Biggest con job – getting A R Rahman to compose for him

USP – Getting involved in controversies

Use mute button – If he raises his voice to high pitch

Favourite colours – Blue and Pink

New Indian Express interviewed the irritating SJ Suryah in its Sunday edition. Here are some excerpts:

This man insists he isn’t going to budge until he becomes superstar Rajinikant, super-producer AM Ratnam, and super-director Mani Ratnam all rolled into one. And if you don’t like it, lump it.

Now all he needed was AR Rahman, the best music director in the country. Suryah met the composer on a return flight from Mumbai. Plonking himself into the seat vacant next to Rahman, Suryah told the composer he wanted to make a movie and wanted him to do the music. Rahman told him to come back with a screenplay and he would decide. Suryah said okay and, 15 seconds later, started narrating the screenplay of New. The flight landed after ninety minutes, and Suryah had Rahman. “Always aim for the stars,” says Suryah.

New was the first movie Suryah was going to star in. Everyone wondered (and still wonder) why he just didn’t get a top hero. “Why should I get someone else? I came to Kollywood to be an actor. Tell me one person who can direct, act, dance, write dialogues and fight as well as me. I challenge you.”

Suryah’s next starring movie A Aah (or Anbe Aaruyirae or Best Friend), which in all honesty is a good movie, about two people in love who break up and are brought together by their memories (a Suryah and actress Nila in a very unflattering electric blue), bombed at the box-office.

“Flop. Hit. All humbug,” says Suryah. "Hundred days, 175 days, 200 days, all lies. What a movie collects in the first four weeks after it is released is 90 percent of its collection. The rest is just enough for office expenditure, to send your clerk for coffee.