September 23, 2025 07:26 AM IST First published on: Sep 23, 2025 at 07:26 AM ISTThe first role for which Mohanlal was recognised at the National Awards was, arguably, also one that would mark him as a future recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. The 1989 film Kireedam, in which Mohanlal played, with heart-rending realism, a young man whose future is destroyed by one act of unintended violence, was a career-defining project for him. It was an extraordinary instance of an actor completely disappearing into a character — it would be counted as just one more role in which Mohanlal displayed an uncanny ability to shapeshift.An actor’s trajectory is often defined by the tension between two attributes — popularity and artistry — often seen as inversely proportional to each other. If an actor is popular, she/he must not be very talented. To see this as the shibboleth that it is, all one needs to do is go through Mohanlal’s five-decade-long filmography. Starting in the 1980s, just as filmmakers like Sathyan Anthikad, Padamarajan and Priyadarshan and writers like Lohithadas and Sreenivasan were modernising Malayalam cinema, the actor has a body of work marked as much by popular appeal as critical acclaim. An instinctive, naturally gifted actor, small shifts in posture and microexpressions are all he has ever needed to essay the vast range of human experience, from the drug-addicted doctor of Amrutham Gamaya (1987), to the heartbroken Kathakali artist of Vanaprastham (1999), from the disenchanted actor-turned-politician of Iruvar (1997) to the layabout looking for a shortcut to wealth in Nadodikkattu (1987).AdvertisementThere are a few duds, inevitable for an actor with over 300 films. Yet, even as Mohanlal’s popularity has soared, cementing his iconic status in Malayalam cinema, his sublime performances over four decades have made him richly deserving of Indian cinema’s highest honour.