04 Screen
Cinema &
Professional
Journey
A working life on screen that began in 1965 with a child role, resumed in the mid-1980s, and produced a body of work large enough that its own count is usually given in the hundreds.
i The award
Kaliyattam
1997 · dir. Jayaraj
Jayaraj’s Kaliyattam transposes Shakespeare’s Othello into the world of Theyyam, the ritual performance tradition of north Kerala. Suresh Gopi played Kannan Perumalayan, the film’s Othello.
The performance won him the National Film Award for Best Actor at the 45th National Film Awards, and the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor. Jayaraj won Best Director at the same national ceremony. The film also took the Kerala State Film Award for Best Film with Popular Appeal and Aesthetic Value, and Suresh Gopi took the Kerala Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor for the same year.
ii Known for
The films most often
named with him.
The titles below are the ones consistently identified in published accounts of his career. This is a selection, not a filmography; the complete list of his screen credits runs to several hundred titles and is not reproduced here.
- Ekalavyan1993
- Manichitrathazhu1993
- Mafia1993
- Commissioner1994
- Kaliyattam1997
- Lelam1997
- Pathram1999
- F.I.R.1999
- Chinthamani Kolacase2006
Scroll → · Selected titles, in order of release
iii Beyond acting
Singing, and
the television years.
Alongside his screen work, Suresh Gopi has performed as a playback singer — it is listed among his occupations in the standard accounts of his career — and continues to sing on stage.
From 2012 he presented the Malayalam edition of the international quiz format Ningalkkum Aakaam Kodeeshwaran on Asianet, across five seasons. The programme put him in front of a general television audience week after week for years, in a register quite different from the roles he was known for on film.
In September 2023 he was nominated President of the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute in Kolkata, and Chairman of its governing council, for a three-year term — a position within the film-education establishment rather than the industry.
Published counts of Suresh Gopi’s filmography differ, and are generally given as “more than 250 films”. Because no single authoritative list is available, no precise total is asserted on this page.
No film stills, posters or other promotional material from any production are reproduced here. The photographs on this page are general portraits and performance photographs, not material owned by a production.