5 fascinating facts you didn’t know about Jagame Thandhiram’s Dhanush

Chasing the success of Karnan with Jagame Thandhiram, undoubtedly the biggest Tamil film to ever premiere on a streaming platform, Dhanush surely seems to be on a roll in 2021. The Tamil actor has, over the years, carved himself as a truly breakthrough performer, having impressed equally in films across languages and will be seen next in Anand L Rai’s Atrangi Re, sharing the screen with the likes of Akshay Kumar and Sara Ali Khan. Having acquired fans across India, it’s natural that most may be aware of every minute detail about the National Award-winning actor. But here are a few rare facts about Dhanush that even hardcore fans may not know about the actor:

1. Dhanush's real name is Venkatesh Prabhu and his stage name is a tribute to 'Operation Dhanush' which is a counter-terrorist mission in the cult 1995 film Kuruthipunal starring Kamal Haasan and Arjun Sarja.

2. During his school days, Dhanush wanted to study hotel management and eventually become a chef, but on the insistence of his elder brother Selvaraghavan, he made his acting debut in 2002 under his father Kasthuri Raja’s directorial Thulluvadho Ilamai, a coming-of-age story of six high school students.

3. The song Why this Kolaveri Di is one of the most streamed songs of all time. Dhanush wrote the Tanglish (Tamil + English) lyrics of the song in under 10 minutes and proceeded to record it with Anirudh Ravichander in just half an hour. While the internet is filled with covers of the song, the most interesting one has to be the version played by a marching military band at the Beating the Retreat ceremony in 2012 in front of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

4. Of the seven actors who have won the National Film Award for Best Actor — Sanjeev Kumar, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Mithun Chakraborty, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgn and Dhanush, he is the youngest to have won the honour for Aadukalam in 2010 when he was only 26 years old. He also won a National Award for his performance in Asuran in 2019.

5. Dhanush made his foray into world cinema when he played the protagonist in the 2018 screen adaptation of The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puertolas where his love interest is played by Erin Moriarty who became well known for playing the superhuman character Starlight in The Boys.