Thanks to his insane popularity I think there is almost nothing about Rajnikanth which is not well known in public domain. Possibly the following are some titbits which his fans might still find interesting.
Rajni made his debut in a small role in Apoorva Ragangal starring Kamal Haasan in the lead in 1975. In the next few years he and Kamal costarred in about a dozen movies which were all commercially successful. Then it was Kamal who suggested that they should stop acting together, as this was hampering the career progression of both, especially that of Rajni. So they stopped acting together from 1980 and have never shared screen space in a movie since.
(Kamal and Rajni with their mentor, K.Balachander)
Rajni costarred with actress Latha, who was a favored heroine of M.G.R earlier, in the 1978 film Aayiram Jenmangal. It was widely rumored in those days that during the shoot of the film Rajni got emotionally involved in a relationship with Latha, which was resented by M.G.R. The story further goes that Rajni was kidnapped in a car to Pondicherry and was roughed up by MGR’s henchmen. In an interesting coincidence Rajnikanth later on fell in love with and married another girl, whose name was also Latha.
(A young Rajnikanth with his wife Latha)
Rajnikanth has been an ardent devotee of sage Sri Raghavendra right from his younger days, and by 1985, exactly after one decade in cinemas, Rajni is said to have felt burn out and wished to quit films after his 100th film. He personally chose the role of Raghavendra to be his swansong, and persuaded his mentor K.Balachander to produce the movie for him, and got his favorite director Sp. Muthuraman to direct it. However the film was not successful commercially, and later on,Rajni was also prevailed upon to drop his idea of quitting films.
(Rajnikanth in his role of a life time as sage Sri Raghvendra in the 1985 movie)
Way back in 1988 Rajnikanth has acted in a pivotal role in an Indian-American English language film titled Bloodstone . When asked about this Rajnikanth jokingly dismissed it saying that the producers were looking out for an Indian actor who could fit the role of a taxi driver, and possibly zeroed in on him because he was the only Indian actor who looked exactly like a taxi driver, while most others looked handsome,rich and aristocratic!
(Rajnikanth in the role of an Indian taxi driver in the English language film, Bloodstone. Incidentally Rajni’s son-in-law, actor Dhanush followed in his footsteps and featured in a Hollywood production titled “The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir)
After a string of blockbusters and ascent to the super stardom, Rajni wrote the story and screenplay, acted and produced his own film Baba in 2002 which bombed badly at the box office, leaving most of the Distributors of the film with huge losses. Rajnikanth reportedly made good some part of their losses from his own pocket and thus started this practice in the Tamil film industry for the first time. Though this gave a boost to his image at that time, it backfired later on himself when his films Kochadaiiyaan and Lingaa flopped one after the other in 2014, and the Distributors started clamoring for Rajni to compensate for their losses once again. It was said that Producer -Distributor “Kalaippuli” S. Thanu helped him sort out the issue with the recalcitrant distributors, and Rajni, as a token of his appreciation, acted in Kabali produced by S.Thanu a couple of years later, in which he also successfully tried for an image makeover.
(Rajnikanth in Kabali, in a new “avatar”)
So, these are some of the “lesser known” stories about the Super Star, which are predominantly in the realms of grapevine and gossip, for which one can not find any online sources or citation. But in my opinion, what is the biggest “unknown” fact about Rajnikanth is if at all he would take his plunge into politics as he has been promising for over two decades, and if so, when?
