Thirupathisamy was an Indian film director, known for his works in Telugu cinema and Tamil cinema. After making his debut in 1998 with the successful Ganesh, he has gone on to make other box office hits including Azad and Narasimha. He died in a car accident in Chennai in June 2001 at the age of 32.
Early life
Tirupathisami, hailed from an ordinary family in Vannarpet, Chennai. He graduated with master of law from the Ambethkar College.
He began his career as a journalist with
Ananda Vikatan.
Career
Thirupathisamy started his film career assisting
Suresh Krissna in films
Veera (1994) and
Baashha (1995).
He made his directorial debut with
Ganesh (1998), a Telugu language action film starring Venkatesh, which went on to win five
Nandi Awards. Thirupathiswamy made
Azad, another successful Telugu action film, starring Nagarjuna,
Soundarya and
Shilpa Shetty in 2000 and won positive reviews for his work. He was then signed up to direct a Tamil film,
Narasimha, after director N. Maharajan had opted out of making the Vijayakanth-starrer.
Due to the success of his previous two films and his work in
Narasimha, the director was also signed up to direct
Velan with Vijay and
Priyanka Chopra in the lead roles, which would have been a remake of his Telugu film
Azad.
However the director died before the release of the film after being a part of a car crash while returning home from an editing session - the producers of
Narasimha later dedicated the film to him.
Legacy
The story of the planned film,
Velan, was later used by M. Raja when he made
Velayudham (2011) with Vijay.
Actor Srikanth's character in the film
Sadhurangam (2011) was named after Thirupathisamy, who was the director Karu Pazhaniappan's close friend.
[ Videos – Azhagu Kutti Chellam] Similarly,
AR Murugadoss noted that the story of his production
Engaeyum Eppothum (2011) reminded him of the tragic incident of Thirupathisamy's death.
Filmography
As a director
|
| Nandi Award for Best Feature Film (Bronze) |
Nandi Award for Best Feature Film (Silver)
Nandi Award for Best Story Writer[(in Telugu language)] |
| Posthumous release |
As an assistant director
