About Lalettan

	Mohanlal was born in Elanthur in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala, to Vishwanathan Nair, a lawyer and government employee and Santhakumari on 21 may 1960. The family later shifted to Mudavanmugal in Thiruvananthapuram, which was the house of his mother.
Mohanlal joined the Mudavanmukal LP school and later enrolled in the model School, Trivandrum. Mohanlal first demonstrated his talent for acting in 1972, when he was chosen as the best actor of the school while he was in the sixth grade competing with the 10th graders. He attended Mahatma Gandhi College in Thiruvananthapuram for his bachelor's degree. He continued his association with acting and won numerous best actor awards. It was here that he met a group of fellow-students, who were passionate about theatre and feature films.
	Mohanlal got entry into movies when his friends opened up a film company called Bharath CineGroup and started making a film 'Thiranottam', in which Mohanlal was given a comic role to enact. Unfortunately, due to certain reasons this film was released in one theatre only. As such, the first meaningful break into movies came into 1980s for Mohanlal. There was a production house that was looking for fresh faces. Mohanlal's friends applied for this post on his behalf, which got him selected by Navodaya Appachen for the role of antagonist in Manjil Virinja Pookkal which became a major hit.
There was no shortage of opportunities after this for Mohanlal. By 1983, he featured in more than 25 movies. As a young talented man, Mohanlal received many offers to explore a variety of characters and during this course, he turned pally with a number of Malayalam film directors and script writers. The mid 1980s proved to be most beneficial for Mohanlal as Sathyan Anthikad's T.P.Balagopalan M.A got him the first Kerala State award for best actor.Further he portrayed an underworld don in the blockbuster film ‘Rajavinte Makan’ in 1986. Mohanlal's popularity among teenage moviegoers was increased by this film which brought him a super hero image.
	In the 1990s, Mohanlal acted in a number of notable commercial movies, such as His Highness Abdullah, Midhunam, Minnaram and Manichithrathazhu. Devasuram, written by Ranjith and directed by I. V. Sasi, was one of Mohanlal's most successful films. Mohanlal's first non-Malayalam movie was the Tamil film Iruvar(1997), directed by Mani Ratnam. He won his second National Award for Best Actor for the Indo-French movie Vaanaprastham. The film was also selected for the competitive section at the Cannes Film Festival. Mohanlal's movie Guru was chosen as India's official entry to the Oscars to be considered for nomination in the Best Foreign Film for 1997.
In 2000, Mohanlal starred in Narasimham, which became one of the highest grossing movies in the history of Malayalam cinema. Mohanlal was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2001. In 2002, Mohanlal acted in his first Bollywood movie, Company, which introduced him to the Hindi-speaking audience in India and for which he won the IIFA Star Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor. He debuted on the stage as Karna (a character in the Indian epic Mahabharata) in Karnabharam, a Sanskrit play that was premiered in New Delhi as part of the National Theatre Festival. Mohanlal was chosen as the Most Popular Keralite by a survey conducted by CNN-IBN in 2006. He was granted the rank of honorary Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Territorial Army in 2009, Mohanlal was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in 2010.