Nivin Pauly

Nivin Pauly shifted Malayalam cinema toward the boy-next-door with breakup ballads and sports dramas that turned 2012's Thattathin Marayathu into a launching pad. Born 11 October 1984 in India, the actor and producer collected two Kerala State Film Awards, three Filmfare Awards South, two Kerala Film Critics Association Awards, and six SIIMA Awards. He made his acting debut in Vineeth Sreenivasan's directorial debut, Malarvaadi Arts Club, in 2010, but stardom followed the romance Thattathin Marayathu two years later.

Pauly became known for playing the boy-next-door archetype across genre boundaries: the bilingual black-comedy thriller Neram (2013), for which he won the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut; the sports-drama 1983 (2014); the romantic-comedy Ohm Shanthi Oshaana (2014); the romantic-drama Bangalore Days (2014), which earned him the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor in 2015 alongside 1983; and the coming-of-age romantic drama Premam (2015). He continued with the police drama Action Hero Biju (2016), for which he won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Malayalam, the family drama Jacobinte Swargarajyam (2016), the political satire Sakhavu (2017), the family comedy Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela (2017), and the epic Kayamkulam Kochunni (2018), one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films. Later roles included the romantic action comedy Love Action Drama (2019) and Sarvam Maya (2025), which became his career's highest-grossing film.

As a producer, Pauly founded Pauly Jr. Pictures and made his debut producing Action Hero Biju. He went on to produce Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela and Kanakam Kaamini Kalaham (2021), the first Malayalam movie to premiere on Disney+ Hotstar. In 2020, he won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor – Special Mention for Moothon. A Libra born under life-path 7, Pauly represents the introspective, thoughtful actor archetype—his brand of quiet intensity defined Malayalam mainstream cinema in the 2010s.