K. Shankar

He directed more than 80 films in South Indian languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada as well as in Hindi.

Shankar started his film career as an editor Assistant at Central Studios, Coimbatore in 1939 and later moved to Pakshiraja Studios. He later became a successful editor at AVM Studios, before moving into film direction. He gave blockbuster film Alaya mani (1962) for Sivaji Ganesan highest grosser of that year and went on to direct 7 Sivaji Ganesan films. He gave superhits like Rajkumar (1964) and Sachaai (1969) with Shammi kapoor and Sadhana in lead roles. Next to P. Neelakantan, Shankar was also credited with creating M. G. Ramachandran's (MGR) movie persona, in 8 movies he had directed MGR. MGR chose Shankar to direct his own production, "Adimai Penn".

Shankar died due to heart attack at his residence on 5 March 2006 at the age of 79. He is married to Kamakshi Ammal and has six children. He has daughters Vijayalakshmi, Rukmani and Radha and sons Sivaprasad, Saseetharan and Ganesan. Sivaprasad made his directorial debut with Kalyana Rasi (1991).