Jayalalitha & Major Sundarrajan Movies Together List — 12 Films

The shape of the work

The 1970s account for 67% of everything they made together. The 1960s belonged to Major Chandrakanth; the 1970s to Padhukappu. Jayalalitha acted in every film; Major Sundarrajan acted in all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Jayalalitha was just 18 when she first shared screen space with Major Sundarrajan in Motor Sundaram Pillai (1966). He was already a veteran stage actor. She later said she was nervous acting opposite him, but he calmed her down by cracking jokes between takes.
• In Major Chandrakanth (1966), Sundarrajan played a stern father while Jayalalitha played his daughter. The film's emotional climax — where she breaks down and he silently cries — became a template for Tamil family dramas. Directors later admitted they wrote father-daughter conflicts specifically for this pair.
• On the sets of Kudiyirundha Koyil (1968), Sundarrajan would personally make sure Jayalalitha's coffee was brought on time. She later recalled he treated her like a younger sister, not a co-star. They never had a single reported fight across 9 films.
• Thanga Gopuram (1971) was the first Tamil film where a female lead (Jayalalitha) got equal screen time and dialogue weight as the male lead (Sundarrajan) in a non-romantic plot. This directly influenced later films like Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal (1977) that gave women more agency.
• Jayalalitha once told a magazine: 'Major Sundarrajan was the only co-star who never once made me feel like a woman first. He treated me like an actor. That's rare in this industry.'
• In Anbu Thangai (1974), Sundarrajan deliberately slowed his dialogue delivery to match Jayalalitha's natural rhythm. He told the director: 'She thinks faster than me. Let her lead the scene, I'll follow.' That film became a sleeper hit largely because of their conversational pacing.