Rs 20 a day in a Tiruppur factory town: the 13-year wait behind Soori's rise
Dubai: A week from now, Soori will open a film in which he plays a fishing captain leading a crew through a 100km sailboat race along the Tamil Nadu coast. He performed the sea stunts himself. Thirty-three years ago, he was a teenager in Tiruppur earning Rs 20 for a day's labour and going without meals to send money home. The distance between those two is one of the more remarkable careers in…
Soori, a successful Tamil cinema actor, underwent a remarkable transformation from a daily wage laborer earning just Rs 20 per day in Tiruppur to an acclaimed leading man. Born Ramalakshmanan Muthuchamy, he was one of six siblings in a modest household in Madurai. After being inspired by Rajinikanth's character Surya in the 1991 film Thalapathi, he changed his name to Soori to pursue a career in cinema.
For thirteen years, Soori endured poverty, doing unglamorous work like cleaning and painting at film sets and earning negligible pay. His breakthrough came in 2009 with the film Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu, where his comic role and a memorable parotta-eating scene earned him widespread recognition. Soori has since become one of the most sought-after comedians in Tamil cinema, collaborating with Sivakarthikeyan in several successful films.
His big break came in 2023 when he was cast as the lead in Vetrimaaran's Viduthalai Part 1, opposite Vijay Sethupathi. Soori's performance in the film was highly acclaimed, and he reprised the role in the sequel, Viduthalai Part 2, released in 2024. Soori's next project, the sports action drama Mandaadi, is set to release in September 2026, featuring a long-distance sailboat race across Tamil Nadu's coastline.
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