Over the years RGV has given us many actors and changed the perception about many of them. From Nagarjuna to Manoj Bajpayee and Vivek Oberoi to Urmila Matondkar, there are many actors whose career graph changed after working with Varma. Despite failure at the box office, actors continue to follow him. The national award winning Usha Jadhav, who is playing Muthulakshmi, says she has been following RGV since Traffic Signal for a role. “His research was good enough for me to create a character sketch of Veerappan’s wife. I wanted to know whether she is bitter now after all thee years of public interest in the case and his interviews with her help me create the back story.” Lisa Ray, who has shed her glamorous image in Hindi cinema, to play the role of an informer, says, RGV works fast. “But he allows you to improvise. What is there on the page evolves into something else on screen, and this is what an actor hopes for.”
Ultimately, the film will be remembered for Sandeep Bharadwaj, who looks almost as vicious as Veerappan. Interestingly, RGV finds the theatre actor, cute. “After two auditions, I just had the gut instinct that he will fit the role.” Bharadwaj is mad about details. “I had to lose weight, trim by eyebrows and tan my body. Also, I had to develop a body language that suits the space. The guy had lived all his life in the jungle where there is no straight path and where at times he walked for 50 kms at a stretch. It should reflect in this gait. So is his coldness towards taking somebody’s life.” For this Bharadwaj ensured that the gun becomes a part of his everyday life, an extension of his body. The moustache proved to be crucial. “The moment I put on the moustache, I became the character,” laughs Sandeep. However, will Sachin Joshi match Shiva Rajkumar as the SP of STF? Sachin, who has produced the film, doesn’t look confident. He is not the only one!
