HBD Rajinikanth: The Superstar who shouldered films in supporting roles

The Rajinikanth we now know is well past a multi-starrer given his mass screen presence. But we can't have enough of his character roles of the yesteryear, wherein he steals the show despite not in a role you are instantly convinced to be attention-grabbing.

As he turns, 71, here are five movies from the 70s we picked that makes a case for style-quotient being one of the many reasons for Rajinikanth's rise to stardom and not the only reason.

The film is the Hindi remake of Manmohan Desai's Raampur Ka Lakshman. Rajinikanth plays a negative role in this film. You could make out from his accent that he was still improving his Tamil, but it sounds impressive nonetheless. The scene where he cons the cops into believing that he is not the boss of an underground gang they are on the lookout for, which stands out to this date and a novelty of those times.

This 1978 Deepavali fare is one of the most impressive films of the Rajini-Kamal combo. Every character of this film is carefully and uniquely etched. Sripriya's morality gets under the scanner because of her troubled upbringing, Kamal Haasan is a platonic lover and Rajinikanth is an opportunistic male chauvinist who believes women to primarily be a source for sense gratification. You can witness a Rajinikanth, who lacks image-consciousness but still delivers his role with poise.

This rural drama by Bharathiraja will feature if a rule-book on filmmaking of the rural milieu ever gets published. Though Kamal Haasan's Sappaani is high on experimentation, there are numerous scenes where Rajinikanth, as the bad guy Parattai, displays his capacity of thunder-stealing just two/three years into films. The character of Parattai is said to be designed on the lines of Kondaji, essayed by Rajinikanth himself, in the 1975 Kannada film Katha Sangama.

Another gem in the Rajinikanth classics, Moondru Mudichu makes it hard for you to argue against the hypothesis of Prasath (Rajinikanth) lending a shade of grey or two to Darr's Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) and Priyamudan's Vasanth (Vijay). Playing a friend of Kamal Haasan in the movie, Rajini is seemingly an angel to the former, whose spitefulness is known only to the leading lady Sridevi. Prasath's horns are fully exposed in Vasantha Kaala Nathiyinile boat-rowing scene. Not just in an openly boorish Paratta kind of a bad guy role, Rajini is at his apex even with a scheming character who puts on a facade of a good guy.

Taking in charge of the oar in a Sivaji Ganesan film is close to impossible, only if you are not Rajinikanth. Rajini's role in this film can be termed as an extended cameo, but it is too heavy and important to be called that. Rajini is introduced well into the second half of the movie, as an expert criminal who could help Sivaji out of his catch-22 situation as the latter is implicated for a murder he hasn't committed. For the little screentime Rajini had and that too in a film led by a doyen called Sivaji Ganesan, the indelible mark made by the Superstar as a fledgling can only be explained by Aandavan, to borrow the former's lingo.