Parthasarathy Srinivasan, known professionally as Kamal Haasan, is an Indian actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, choreographer, playback singer, lyricist, television presenter, social activist and politician who works in Tamil cinema. Besides Tamil films, he has also appeared in some Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. Haasan is also known for introducing many new technologies to Tamil cinema. He has won numerous accolades, including four National Film Awards, nine Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, four Nandi Awards, one Rashtrapati Award, two Filmfare Awards and eighteen Filmfare Awards South. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shri in 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Order of Arts and Letters in 2016.
Haasan started his career as a child artist in the 1960 Tamil film Kalathur Kannamma for which he won a President's Gold Medal. After a sabbatical, he received his breakthrough with the 1975 drama Apoorva Raagangal, directed by K. Balachander, in which he played a rebellious youth who falls in love with an older woman which earned him his first Filmfare Award.