M. N. Nambiar & M. G. Ramachandran Movies Together List — 38 Films

The shape of the work

The 1960s account for 66% of everything they made together. The 1960s belonged to Enga Veettu Pillai; the 1990s to Avasara Police 100. M. N. Nambiar acted in every film; M. G. Ramachandran acted in all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• MGR personally requested Nambiar for the villain role in Baghdad Thirudan (1960) after seeing him in a stage play. Nambiar was hesitant to play a negative role opposite MGR, but MGR convinced him it would be a career-defining move.
• On set, MGR would deliberately slow down his dialogue delivery during fight scenes so Nambiar could land his punches cleanly. Nambiar later said MGR 'fought like a dancer' — he controlled the rhythm of every action sequence to make both of them look good.
• Their 1965 hit Ayirathil Oruvan directly inspired the 1978 Bollywood film Don. The plot — a lookalike villain replacing a hero — was lifted scene-for-scene by the Hindi writers, though they never credited the original Tamil film.
• Nambiar was the only co-star MGR allowed to smoke on set. MGR was famously anti-smoking and banned cigarettes from his productions, but made an exception for Nambiar because they shared a private joke about 'villains needing vices'.
• Nambiar once said in a 1995 interview: 'MGR never treated me like a villain. He treated me like a co-star. That's why I never felt small standing next to him.'
• In Ulagam Sutrum Valiban (1973), Nambiar's character was written to die early. But MGR saw the rushes and ordered the script rewritten — he felt Nambiar's screen presence made the hero look stronger, so he kept the villain alive until the climax.