Sreenivasan (6 April 1956 – 20 December 2025) was an Indian actor, screenwriter, director and producer in Malayalam cinema. He acted in more than two hundred films, but his greatest contribution was as a writer: his screenplays of the 1980s and 1990s, among them Nadodikkattu, Varavelpu and Sandesham, turned unemployment, small-town ambition and political hypocrisy into comedies that Malayalis still quote line by line. The two films he directed both won major awards.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Sreenivasan |
| Born | 6 April 1956, Patyam, near Thalassery, Kannur district, Kerala |
| Died | 20 December 2025 (aged 69), Tripunithura, Kochi |
| Occupation | Actor, screenwriter, director, producer |
| Years active | 1976–2023 |
| Known for | Nadodikkattu, Varavelpu, Sandesham, Vadakkunokkiyanthram, Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala, Udayananu Tharam, Katha Parayumbol |
| Education | Film and Television Institute of Tamil Nadu, Chennai |
| Spouse | Vimala |
| Children | Vineeth Sreenivasan, Dhyan Sreenivasan |
Early Life
Sreenivasan was born at Patyam, a village near Thalassery in northern Kerala. His father was a schoolteacher and a communist, and the argumentative politics of Kannur, which he observed from childhood, later supplied him with characters. He studied economics at college in Mattanur and then acting at the film institute in Madras, where he completed his diploma in 1977.
Career
Actor
He made his first appearance in P. A. Backer’s Manimuzhakkam (1976) and for some years had small parts and worked as a dubbing artist. Short, dark and unglamorous by the standards of the time, he made those qualities the basis of his screen persona: the envious friend, the insecure husband, the man who knows he is being laughed at.
Screenwriter
He began writing for Priyadarshan in 1984 and then formed, with the director Sathyan Anthikad and the actor Mohanlal, one of the most productive teams in Malayalam cinema. T. P. Balagopalan M.A., Gandhinagar 2nd Street and Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam dealt with educated young men who could not find work. In Nadodikkattu (1987) he and Mohanlal played Vijayan and Dasan, two sacked peons who set out for the Gulf and are put ashore in Madras instead; the pair returned in two sequels.
Varavelpu (1989) followed a man who comes home from the Gulf with his savings and is ruined by trade unions and officials when he buys a bus. A Prime Minister of India later cited it in a speech as a picture of Kerala’s investment climate. Sandesham (1991), in which two brothers belonging to rival parties wreck their retired father’s household, is regarded as the finest political satire in the language. He also wrote Thalayana Manthram, Mithunam, Azhakiya Ravanan, Udayananu Tharam (2005), a satire on film stardom in which he played a vain actor, and Katha Parayumbol (2007), in which he was a village barber who was once the friend of a superstar. His last major script was Njan Prakashan (2018).
Director
He directed two films. Vadakkunokkiyanthram (1989), in which he played a husband destroyed by suspicion of his beautiful wife, won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Film. Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala (1998), about a schoolteacher who abandons his family for religion and get-rich-quick schemes, won the National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Views
He was an advocate of organic farming and cultivated rice and vegetables near Kochi. In later years he drew controversy for remarks questioning aspects of modern medicine. He remained a critic of all the state’s political parties.
Personal Life
He married Vimala, a teacher, in 1984. Their sons are both in films: Vineeth Sreenivasan is a director, actor and singer, and Dhyan Sreenivasan an actor and director.
Death and Legacy
He had been in poor health since heart surgery in 2022. He died in hospital at Tripunithura on 20 December 2025. Directors and writers of the generation that followed have named his screenplays as the model for writing ordinary Malayali life with affection and without flattery.
Featured image: Sreenivasan speaking at a stage show. Photo by an unknown photographer, in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
