Shankar Shanmugam is an Indian filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the best filmmakers in the history of Indian Cinema. Starting his career in 1993 with Tamil Cinema, Shankar rose to fame with his back-to-back superhit films in the first and second decades of the 21st century. Due to his diligent personality, Shankar is one of the highest-paid and most innovative directors in Cinema. Because of his high-budgeted films, he is often regarded as the Steven Spielberg of Indian Cinema. Let us know some more about S. Shankar.
Biography/Wiki
S. Shankar was born on 17 August 1963 (Age: 60 Years, as of 2023) in Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India. He enrolled at Central Polytechnic College, Chennai, India to pursue his diploma in Mechanical Engineering. Since childhood, Shankar wanted to work in films, and his talent was recognised by a famous screenwriter S. A. Chandrasekhar who accidentally saw the drama at stage shows made by Shankar and his team. Although, he wanted to be an actor, however, he chose to be a director instead.
Physical Appearance
Shankar is 5 feet 9 inches or 175 cm tall. He weighs in around 85 kg or 187 lbs. His eye and hair color is black.
Family
Shankar was born to Shanmugam (Father) and Muthulakshmi (Mother). Shankar is married to Easwari Shankar.
The couple has one son, Arjith Shankar, and two daughters; Aditi Shankar and Aishwarya Shankar.
Career
Shankar started his career as an assistant to directors like S. A. Chandrasekhar and Pavithran. As an assistant to S. A. Chandrasekhar, his first film was Jai Shiv Shankar (1990) which was produced by the famous actor Rajesh Khanna.
His first film as director was Gentleman which was a Tamil film that was released in 1993. He debuted in Hindi Cinema with the film Nayak (2001) starring Anil Kapoor. Some of his directorial ventures are Indian (Tamil), Jeans, Shivaji, Robot (renamed as Enthiran; the Most expensive Indian film at that time), Nanban, I, etc.
After the commercial success of Enthiran in 2010, Shankar started to work on sci-fi fiction 2.0 in 2015. It is the most expensive Indian Film ever with a budget of ₹543 crore or $76 million. After that, he started working on Indian2, a sequel to his Tamil film Indian.
Net Worth
As of 2017, his net worth is around ₹116 Crore.
Facts
- Shankar’s two films; Indian (1996) and Jeans (1998), were nominated to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
- Shankar has been the highest-paid director in Indian Cinema.
- For most of his career, he has primarily worked for Tamil Cinema.
- Shankar is the only director to have zero flops to his credit.
- He has directed 12 movies collaborating with musical maestro A.R. Rahman.
- In 2006, he won the National Film Award for his Tamil film, Veyil.
- Shankar is considered the Steven Spielberg of Indian Cinema due to his history of making big-budget films.
- His favorite musician is A. R. Rahman and his favorite actor is Rajinikanth.