Sai Kumar, the irreplaceable king of voice, since decades, completes 40 years of his successful career in the movies.

In this long 40 years of journey, there are many milestones he secured, crossing away many stones. Let us get into his journey and know about the key issues, which would be inspiring to the upcoming aspiring artists.

Sai Kumar birth

Sai Kumar was born on July 27th, 1961 for the couple P J Sharma and Krishna jyothi. His father P J Sharma is a well known dubbing artist and also an actor. 

Sai Kumar first performance

At Madras Vani Mahal in 1972, October 20th, on the occasion of Rajababu birthday, Sai Kumar played as Duryodhana in a drama. That is the first performance of Sai, on the stage.

Entered as a voice artist through NTR movie

With the legendary actor SVR blessings, Sai Kumar started his career in movies. In 1974, Sai Kumar donated the voice to Sekhar in a film called ‘Samsaaram’, in which senior NTR is the lead of the film.

Dubbed for all major stars of Indian movies

Since then, in a span of 40 years, Sai Kumar has completed more than 1000 films. He dubbed for almost all Indian star heroes like Amithab Bachchan, Vinod Khanna, Rajinikanth, Mammoty, Mohan Lal, Suresh Gopi, Vishnu Vardhan, Shankarnath, Vijaykanth, Satya Raj, Prabhu, Arjun etc.

In fact, Sai Kumar even dubbed for Telugu star heroes like Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, Rajashekar, Balakrishna, when they dubbed their Telugu movies in Tamil.

He was credited with the tags called ‘Yuva Kala Vaachaspathi’, ‘Voice of Andhra’.

Sai Kumar acting career

In 1974-75 period, Sai Kumar started his acting career, with a movie called ‘Devudu Chesina Pelli’ in which NTR and Sharada played the lead.   

Since then, he acted in the movies of the star heroes and their generations like Chiranjeevi in Challenge and Ram Charan in Yevadu, as said before, with NTR in  ‘Devudu Chesina Pelli’, Balayya in Rowdy inspector and Seema Simham and also with Kalyan Ram in Pataas.  

Sai Kumar says that he is fortunate to act with three generations of Nandamuri family.

‘Kalikaalam’ movie under Muthyala Subbaiah direction, is one of the turning point for Sai Kumar as an actor. 

Sai Kumar is Police - Police is Sai Kumar

During the shoot of a Kannada movie called ‘Lock up’, Sai Kumar met ‘Thriller’ Manju. The duo friendship led to the ‘Police story’ movie, which changed the Sai Kamar’s fate over night and introduced to the Indian cinema, as a finest actor.

‘Police story’ is the biggest blockbuster in Sai Kumar’s career. The movie was dubbed in Telugu, Tamil and also Bollywood and scored super success in all the languages.

Since then, Sai Kumar has been identified for police characters and portrayed many police characters in the films.

In fact, his ‘Nalugo Simham’ dialogue in the ‘Police story’ film turned as an app by the AP police, with the same name and Sai Kumar was chosen as the brand ambassador for the app, which is inaugurated by AP CM Chandrababu Naidu.  

Along with the police, other characters like Vema Reddy, Kaivara Thathaiah, Mandana Misrudu got a huge popularity in Sai Kumar’s career.

Awards in Sai Kumar career 

In 2006, he secured the Nandi award and Filmfare award for his performance in the movie called ‘Samanyudu’.

In 2o11, both the Nandi award and Filmfare award repeated for his terrific performance in ‘Prasthanam’ movie.

Along with these, Sai Kumar won many local awards in various categories like Best Villain, Best Supporting Artist etc.  

His own movies ‘Eeshwar Allah’, where Ayyappa Sharma is the director and Sai Kumar and Soundarya played the lead, won Nandi award in the category, ‘Best national integrity film’.  

By the way, Sai Kumar’s career best romantic song with Soundarya is in ‘AnthahPuram’ movie. The song is still hot favorite to many music lovers.

Sai Kumar second innings

Apart from acting and voicing in the movies, Sai Kumar entered the TV industry through many game shows. ‘Thamasoma jyothirgamaya’, ‘Deal or no deal’ were his TV programmes, but he is well identified for his show called ‘Wow’ in ETV. In fact, the TV journey is not his second innings, but his continuation of exposing his talents.

A small dissatisfaction in Sai Kumar career

Whatever the awards or rewards he received till date, do not actually equal Sai Kumar talents. He is more deserved to have great identification long back itself. But somehow, that could not happen. However, Sai Kumar is still satisfied with whatever he has today and that positive strength is making him withstand in the industry till today.  
 
Starting with his dad P J Sharma, the legacy continued with Sai Kumar, Bommali Ravi Shankar, Ayyappa P Sharma and now Aadi.

Hope the legacy continues for more decades in the future and the film industry be gifted with the charismatic voices and performances.    

By Phani Ch