Actor and face-finder

Dinesh Nair alias Dinesh Prabhakar is a very familiar face for Malayali film buffs as an actor. But hardly do people recognise him as the casting director of many noted films. For the past few years, he has taken an extra effort to spot the apt actors for each role in various movies, the latest being Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Jacobinte Swargarajyam.

It is for the second time he is recruiting actors for a Vineeth film; the first one was Thira. “I am very happy to be a part of Jacobinte Swargarajyam. It was last year he asked me to join this project as a casting director. Though he had in his mind Renji Panicker sir, Nivin and Sreenath Bhasi to portray some characters, he was looking for actors for the rest of the roles,” he says. Dinesh took around a month to give a final list of actors. “The story, which was based on a real life incident, was set in Dubai. That was the main barrier in front of us as we were supposed to select all the actors from Dubai. That includes the citizens of the UAE, Kenya, the UK and Pakistan,” says the casting director, who started the actor hunt with the sketches given by Vineeth.

“The main issue we faced was casting non-Malayalis. In Dubai, there are no TV actors or drama artistes. We had to ask people we met at shopping malls, offices, airports and other places. Barring a few actors, all were selected from Dubai,” says Dinesh, who has essayed a prominent role in the film. He was also the casting director of Bash Mohammad’s Lukka Chupi, through which Jayasurya bagged a Special Jury Mention at the National Film Awards. “I am really happy that Jayan got the award but I am sad that no one watched the film when it reached the theatres. It failed to collect even the production cost. But now people are giving good comments  when the DVDs are out,” says Dinesh, who was one of the executive producers of the film. He’ll be seen next in Asif Ali’s Kavi Udeshichath   and Jeethu Joseph’s Oozham.