Karthik Sivakumar (born 25 May 1979), best known by his stage name Karthi is the younger son of veteran Actor Sivakumar and brother of Actor Surya
Karthik graduated from the prestigious St. Bede’s School in Chennai after which he went on to complete his undergrad from the Crescent Engineering College. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering and got a scholarship to the U.S., where he did his masters. He earned a masters degree in Industrial Engineering from the Binghamton University. He later got a job and was working there for some time. He had also done a couple of basic courses in filmmaking.
After returning to India, he got to meet noted director Mani Ratnam, who initially offered him to act in the film Aayutha Ezhuthu, in which he should essay the role of Arjun (later played by Siddharth). But Karthi instead joined him as an assistant director for the same film and its Hindi version Yuva, since he always wanted to become a film director and preferred direction to acting.
However, acting offers kept coming for him and when Ameer Sultan approached him to play the lead role in his film Paruthiveeran, Karthi eventually accepted the offer as the film was “so compelling”. The film was critically and commercially very successful, whilst his portrayal as a careless village rowdy was immensely appreciated by critics and earned him several awards, including the Fimfare Best Tamil Actor Award.
In January 2010, 3 years after the release of his debut film, his second film, the Selvaraghavan-directed fantasy adventure film Aayirathil Oruvan, finally got released. The film, like his first film Paruthiveeran was stuck in production, languishing in production hell, for a long time, before getting released. His character in the film itself was similar and often compared to his own character in his debut film. He will be next seen in the romantic action film Paiyaa directed by N. Linguswamy, and is currently working on Susindran’s second feature film Naan Mahaan Alla.
Actor Karthi Awards:
Fimfare Best Tamil Actor Award
Tamil Nadu State Film Special Award for Best Actor
Vijay Award for Best Debut Acto
