/>Without trying I became a Tamil star although I'm from Bihar. The Tamil audiences want to see me in films that appeal to the full family audience. I now have to balance marginal movies with full-on masala stuff. "

And Maddy proves he means business. His new out-and-out masala Tamil film Aarya has him at his broad beefy best, beating the baddies black and bruise.

And Madhavan had to change his weight .... again!

Says Madhavan, "It's now getting to be a problem. I've been playing this gain-and-lose game so frequently that it's getting alarming. For Guru I had to look like a lean and on-the-prowl journalist because that's what I was playing.

But for my Tamil film Thambi just before Guru I had to put on a beefy action hero's girth. And after going luminously lean in Guru I got even leaner for my harassed middleclass commuter's role in the Tamil version of Nishikant Kamath's Dombivali Fast (entitled Yenalu Oruvan).

Now I'm back to a more hefty look in Aarya because I play a small town boy medical college student. "

On top of that the producer Vijay Anand disappeared for eight months. "So we shot the film over a period of one and a half years. Aarya is my most delayed film to date. But it doesn't look dated. It a shamelessly hardcore masala film. And it has been sold at the highest price ever for one of my films. "

Maddy's antagonist in the film is the versatile Prakash Raj who has lately been penciled in by Raj Kumar Santoshi to play Ravan in Ramayan, plays Madhavan's antagonist.

"But there's a difference between the hero-villain conflicts in this film and the other films. The villain Prakash Raj can't touch me because his sister is in love with me.

Aarya is an action film without punches being thrown in the first half. Me and my co-stars did the scenes with our finger crossed. The dramatic conflict in Aarya isn't packaged in the usual way. "

Madhavan will now divide his time between satisfying his audiences with potboilers like Aarya and more sensitive films like Nishikant Kamath's Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan (in Hindi).

"In Yeh Hai Mumbai...I share space with actors like Irrfan Khan and Kay Kay, " said Maddy before flying off to Singapore for the premiere for Aarya.

Singapore suddenly seems to have become a big market for Tamil cinema. "I guess so, " laughs Maddy. "I seem to have a lot of fans out there. "