The Tamil film star whose debut flopped now runs the state
At 18, Vijay was mocked for his looks after his first leading role sank at the box office. Three decades later he was one of India's best-paid actors, and in May 2026 the party he founded made him chief minister of Tamil Nadu, ending a long two-party grip on its politics.
Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay was born in Madras on 22 June 1974 to a film-director father, S. A. Chandrasekhar, and a playback-singer mother, Shoba. He first appeared on screen as a child in Vetri in 1984, then in a string of pictures his father directed. His father also gave him his adult lead in Naalaiya Theerpu in 1992, a failure that drew harsh reviews. Chandrasekhar's fix was to pair him with the established hero Vijayakanth in Senthoorapandi the following year, and that film worked.
For roughly a decade Vijay was a romantic lead, charming and comic. Kadhalukku Mariyadhai won him Best Actor at the Tamil Nadu State Film Awards for the first time. The pivot came with the masala hit Thirumalai, which recast him as an action hero, and then Ghilli in 2004, the first Tamil film to take more than 500 million rupees at the domestic box office. From there the numbers kept climbing: Thuppakki passed 121 crore, Mersal became his first film beyond 250 crore, and Leo in 2023 grossed over 600 crore.
Off screen, he gathered his fans into a welfare organisation, Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, in 2009, and used it for charity across the state. Later roles, in films such as Kaththi and Sarkar, cast him as a crusader against corruption and inequality, which repeatedly put him at odds with whoever held power in Tamil Nadu.
In February 2024 he announced he was leaving cinema and launched Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, a secular party pitched as an alternative to the Dravidian establishment. In the 2026 assembly election it won 108 seats, becoming the largest single party and breaking a near half-century duopoly of the DMK and AIADMK. With smaller allies, he was sworn in on 10 May 2026 as the state's ninth chief minister. His farewell film, Jana Nayagan, leaked online before release yet still became the top-grossing Tamil film of 2026.
Source: C. Joseph Vijay
