Napoleon (actor)

Kumaresan Duraisamy (born 2 December 1963), better known by his stage name Napoleon, is a Tamil film actor, politician and the founder and chairman of the Jeevan Technologies. He was the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet. Earlier in life, he acted in nearly 100 movies in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam language and Kannada films.

Kumaresan Duraisamy, better known as Napoleon, was born on 2 December 1963—the fifth of six children. His family was occupied in agriculture. He graduated from St. Joseph's College, Trichy. His Father is Duraisamy and Mother Saraswathi Ammal

Politics

After college, he moved to Trichy and became enthused by the ideologies of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party. He joined the party in which his uncle K. N. Nehru was already a member and at that time the Public Welfare Minister of the state government.

Napoleon contested the State Assembly elections of 2001, winning the Villivakkam constituency contest and thereby becoming a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu. He lost his membership in the 2006 elections, when he contested from the Mylapore constituency and was defeated by actor S. Ve. Shekhar. Subsequently, Napoleon nurtured the Perambalur constituency in the hope of becoming a member of parliament for the DMK, and succeeded in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. He was then appointed Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in Union government. Seen as a loyalist of Azhagiri, he was sidelined by DMK after the expulsion of the latter from the party in 2014. He joined the BJP in the presence of party President Amit Shah on 21 December 2014. He was made the party’s state Vice-President on 26 November 2015.

Films

When aged 27, he watched the film Udhayam, the dubbed version of the Telugu film Siva, and was inspired to take up acting. He entered the Tamil film industry in 1991 with P. Bharathiraja's rural film Pudhu Nellu Pudhu Naathu, playing the antagonist role. Other roles followed, including in Ejamaan (1993) Seevalaperi Pandi, Devasuram, Ravanaprabhu, Vattaram, Hello brother, Pokkiri and Dasavatharam. His role as Mundakkal Shekharan in the blockbuster action film Devasuram is widely regarded as his best performance to-date. He reprised the role in the Ravanaprabhu, a sequel to Devasuram.

Among the forthcoming Tamil and Telugu films in which he features are Saleem, Oye!, Pallikondapuram and Azhagarmalai.

Entrepreneurship

In 2000 Napoleon founded Jeevan Technologies in Chennai, and then expanded into the USA and New Zealand. In 2008, the Jeevan IT Academy was started with the mission of training graduates to enter the corporate world with a thorough knowledge of industry standards.

• Won the "Kalaimamani" and "M.G.R." awards in 1998
• Vice-president of the South Indian Film Artistes' Association, 2000–2006
• Best Actor award by the Government of Tamil Nadu for Ettupatti Rasa
• Received a Murasoli Trust "Kalaignar" Award, which is given to people who contribute to Tamil language, literature and culture, in 2007.