The headline stared out of a city entertainment supplement early last week. It was in connection with Mohanlals role in Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (RGVKA), releasing on August 31.

I reacted exactly the way thousands of viewers, mostly Malayali, many Tamil and even some French, would have. In disbelief. Because Mohanlal has danced before. Maybe not in a Hindi movie, which is often enough confused as Indian cinema.

But he has danced before a camera. Hes thumped around in black jeans and sports shoes with gusto in newbie Malayalam movies. Hes pranced joyfully around to music, in several of his mischievous avatars during the early eighties.

Hes glided along with Tabu in Kala Pani. And hes slipped behind a Kathakali mask and gracefully moved his thick frame to clashing drums and cymbals in Vanaprastham, a film that had a cinematic release in France and wowed the press at Cannes.

It was also a film that got Mohanlal a National Award leading some cynics to say that he got it because he produced the movie and went through the painstaking motions of learning Kathakali over months for the role. Ironic then that the media would still say hes never danced before.

Thats because a large part of India has seen just a sliver of Mohanlal. Hes the strategising cop from Company or the brooding one in RGVKA, speaking in halting Hindi, his acting limited by language. Just like the picture of Rajnikant that many Indians have of a swashbuckling hero, splitting a bullet into two.

Recently, Mohanlal walked into Ram Gopal Varmas office in Oshiwara, in the middle of my interview with the director. He apologised, asked us to continue, requesting the director for a CD of RGVKAs trailor.

Im Mohanlal, he said, introducing himself, but said little else besides. Considering his clout, it was as if Amitabh Bachchan or Kamal Haasan had introduced himself. Except that Mohanlal probably has had to, with non-Malayali media and audiences.

Thats sad because in my opinion, Indias greatest three actors are Mohanlal, Mammooty and Naseeruddin Shah (in no particular order). Which is why I bristled last week when director Priyadarshan compared Akshay Kumar to Mohanlal.

No offence to Akshay hes grown tremendously as an actor and straddles comedy, action and drama easily today. But Priyadarshan knows better. Hes directed Mohanlal in 31 out of the more than 270 films that the actor has done.

Im territorial, protective, biased because Ive grown up on Mohanlal. Looking at him now, youd never believe that the actor wasnt a natural.

At first, Mohanlal was skittish and standoffish but even back then, he slanted his right shoulder down, fiddled with his collar and sidled across a room, making him fair game to generations of Malayali mimic artistes.

He was awkward as a villain or a young lover, but you could see even then that he was trying hard to learn his craft. Yet it was in comedy that Mohanlal got his groove back.

Its hazy which role of his first made me keel over with laughter, clutching my stomach. I just remember there being many comedies in the eighties, coming at me fast.

Mohanlal movies helped Kerala forget the inhuman power cuts that baked it in sauna type summers.

We discussed instead how Mohanlal disguised himself as a Nepali gurkha watchman and spoke broken Hindi with such a strong Malayali slant that the residents of Gandhinagar 2nd Street should have seen through him half a mile away.

We roared over his repartee with his nave friend Srinivas in Naadodikkattu. In a scene before their fortunes change, the two are broke and left with a couple of cows mooing in the stables.

Give them their feed and shut them up, Mohanlal says exasperatedly. Deadpan, Srinivas answers that he ate all of the cattle feed three days ago. This was Laurel and Hardy, speaking our tongue.

There are Mohanlal moments that another actor cant touch, let alone imitate. In Mani Ratnams Iruvar, you can almost feel the rush of sensations running through the actor as he watches Pushpa (Aishwarya Rai), dancing on the big screen.

His face, lit up by the flickering film, is almost still but you see the expressions chasing across it. You weep while watching Bharatham (Mohanlal got the National Award for this role) in it, his brother goes missing and is discovered dead in a hit-and-run, but its a secret that Mohanlal has to struggle with.

My favourite Mohanlal sequence comes in Priyadarshans Kilukkam, which the director tried to remake in Hindi as Muskurahat. In it, Jojy (Mohanlal) has just finished boasting to his friend about his luck changing he has met a princess, an heiress, who wants him to show her around Ooty and hes certain that shell offload her millions onto him.

He runs back to the princess (Revathy), only to find shes wrecked the hotel lobby and is narrating a wild, complicated monologue. Mohanlal stares at her for a long half-minute.

In it, you can see his dreams crashing all around him and a sinking realisation. Youre mad, arent you? he asks quietly, not really expecting an answer. Its classic and it reduces everyone into helpless laughter every time theres a Killukkam rerun on television.

With a slew of movies in the eighties, Mohanlals legend and girth grew. It didnt matter to Malayalis that their hero was chubby. We lapped up trivia about him, whether he opened a restaurant in Dubai or did a chai ad. He was called Lalettan (older brother) all through Kerala.

Most of us were surprised to learn that he was painfully shy and self-effacing in real life; hed so led us to believe that he was dashing, screamingly funny and glib through his movies.

But Mohanlal often played the common man hooking his long black umbrella on the back of his collar when he played a contractor or living through the frustration of starting a small-scale industry in bureaucratic, labour-obsessed Kerala.

As the writing in commercial Malayalam cinema became pedestrian, Mohanlal also got into the song and dance routine, moving into fighting and heroics from the everyman mould.

Some of us cringed watching him, but it had to do with the way our movies had turned. Yet hes never lost his popularity Mohanlals done almost 15 films in the last two years alone. In his career, there have been experiments and alternative cinema, some of them produced by the actor himself.

Like Hrishikesh Mukherjee has done in Hindi cinema, Mohanlal has shown many of us how to deal with life through his movies, his characters. Hes helped us laugh at lifes idiosyncracies, wing through the adversities, wrestle with the system. Oh yes, and move to lifes music. Mohanlal is pure hero.

For a crash course in Mohanlal, get hold of the subtitled versions of these incredible performances

* Kilukkam
* Iruvar
* Chitram
* Vandanam
* Naadodikkattu
* Vanaprastham
* Bharatham
* His Highness Abdullah
* Manichitrathazhu
* Kireedam

Who is indias greatest actor?

Role tol ke poll

Feel our list is wrong? Want to add contenders to our league of extraordinary gentlemen? Remember, they have to have done a body of varied work to qualify and stood the test of time. Send us who you think are three of Indias greatest actors ever. Type JEETO SMD (space) Actors Name to 3650

Dilip Kumar
Deepa Gahlot, film critic

Dilip Kumar, because he set a standard everyone else copied from Amitabh Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan and even lesser actors like Rajendra Kumar and Manoj Kumar.

A certain region may prefer an actor because of his style, like Tamilians may do Sivaji Ganesan or Bengalis, Uttam Kumar or Soumitra Chatterjee.

For me though, Dilip Kumar is the greatest because he was the font that everyone else copied from.

Dilip Kumar, SRK
Khalid Mohamed, film critic

Nothing can diminish the impact of Dilip Kumar modern, emotionally dense and natural in his black-and-white films even when they are re-seen today. Deedar, Shahid, Ram aur Shyam..so many..are timeless.

Today, I find Shah Rukh Khan the best capable of surprises, striking a chord with his energy, risk taking and versatility.

I had a Kamal Haasan phase. But he became too smug and gimmicky, and it was time to look away.

Naseeruddin Shah
Mayank Shekhar, film critic

From Masooms DK Malhotra aged and refined into an equally vulnerable Lalit Verma of Monsoon Wedding, or Anirudh Parmar in Sparsh to Dinshaw Sethna in Being Cyrus, I dont know where to start with the accolades.

Kulbushan Kharbanda and Pankaj Kapur because they elevated the craft yet never got the connoisseurs due.

And Amitabh Bachchan, for some of the 70s/80s rubbish he made tolerable on an individual merit.

Naseeruddin Shah
Sudhir Mishra, director

I idolised Mohanlal, Dilip Kumar and Naseeruddin Shah as a young man. Early Dilip Kumar because his acting was highly nuanced. Mohanlals range is amazing. He slips into every kind of film.

You also see the film through him he never obstructs it. Thats a hallmark of great acting. Naseeruddin works best when he believes in a film, in the realm of realism.

He brings great details in performances like Sparsh, Pestonjee and Albert Pinto.

Bachchan
Vipul Shah, director