Nassar & Ilavarasu Movies Together List — 8 Films

The shape of the work

The 2000s belonged to Pudhiya Geethai; the 2020s to Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal. Nassar acted in every film; Ilavarasu acted in all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• For their first film together, Pallavan (2003), director S. A. Chandrasekhar cast Nassar as the villain and Ilavarasu as a cop. Neither had worked together before, and the pairing was a last-minute decision — the director needed two strong character actors who could bounce off each other in a single interrogation scene. That scene became the film's highlight.
• In Veeram (2014), Nassar played the strict father and Ilavarasu played the comic sidekick. On set, Ilavarasu would deliberately flub his lines to make Nassar break character — and Nassar, known for his discipline, would then improvise a sharper retort. Director Siva kept those takes because the tension felt real.
• Nassar and Ilavarasu share a 30-year friendship that predates their first film together. They met in the early 1990s at a theatre workshop in Chennai and stayed in touch. Ilavarasu once said Nassar is the only actor he calls 'Anna' off-camera, even though they are the same age.
• Their pairing in 36 Vayathinile (2015) — where Nassar played the aging husband and Ilavarasu his loyal friend — directly inspired the casting of two older character actors in the 2018 Malayalam film Joseph. The director said he wanted the same 'quiet, lived-in bond' he saw between them.
• Ilavarasu on working with Nassar in Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal (2022): 'He doesn't act. He just becomes the person. I had to stop acting too, or I'd look fake next to him.' He said this in a 2022 interview with Cinema Express.
• In Ko 2 (2016), both played journalists — but they never shared a single scene. The director edited their interactions out. Ilavarasu later joked that they 'acted together without acting together,' and Nassar replied that it was the only film where they didn't have to rehearse because they never met on set.