He was a practicing criminal lawyer when he made his first film at the age of 49.
Thirty-three years down the line, he has worked in all four south Indian languages and won a national award.
Meet Charu Hassan, son of the late Srinivasa Iyengar, a freedom fighter and lawyer from Paramakudi, Tamil Nadu. In his upcoming Malayalam film, Kunthapura, Hassan plays a freedom fighter.
So did this role trigger off memories of pre-independence India?
The octogenarian smiled as he recollected a childhood incident when his father refused to meet a British collector [a district magistrate] when asked by the collector to present himself at a local police station.
“It was during the Quit India movement time. I must have been in class six. I remember my father saying, ‘Ask him to come here if he wants to meet me.’ So the collector came to our home and though my knowledge of English was limited, I clearly understood the words when he told my father, ‘I will skin you alive.’”
However, the following day on returning home from school, little Charuhasan was not happy to see his father having tea with the collector.
“I thought my father was a coward and was angry with his behaviour,” smiled this former Leftist.
“It was only during my college years that I learnt the collector relied on my father for matters concerning complaints against the police.”
In Joe Eshwar’s film, Hassan plays a freedom fighter who tries to get back his property from his grandson.
“The character is unlike me, as I don’t even own a house. Neither did my father own one. My mother owned one as part of [her] dowry.”
“My father, a Gandhian, believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and with this in mind he named us Hassan after Yakub Hassan, the freedom fighter with whom he went to jail.”
An accidental actor, Hassan said he was taking care of public relations for his brother Kamal, daughter Suhasini and son-in-law Mani Ratnam when Tamil director Mahendran offered him a role in Uthiripookal.
“I told him I cannot act but he insisted that he wanted someone who had not acted before.”
Counting Vedham Pudithu among his favourite films, he talked about his award winning Kannada film, Tabarane Katha, where he played an old man fighting for his pension.
“I watched that film with President Venkataraman,” Hassan said, quoting his concluding dialogue from the film.
But the film closest to his heart is Kubi Mattu Ilaya, another Kannada film for which Hassan received a Filmfare award.
“I was sixty then and was expected to play a 35-year-old doctor in this story, which revolved around his friendship with a little girl who is brutally killed.”
