My interest in music was born from my dad singing: Shruti Haasan

It is music that bonds Shruti Haasan with her legendary father Kamal Haasan as she remembers he was always singing around the house when she was a child.

The actor-musician said he would often create fun games when she was growing up, while her mother, Sarika, is a great connoisseur of music.

“I think my interest in music was born from my dad singing around the house. My mom is a great connoisseur of music. She always played music around the house. My dad was always singing and all his games were super creative. He (Haasan) would be like ‘Come, let’s talk for half an hour in a language that doesn’t exist and then turn it into a song’.

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“I’ve always said that my dad has a hidden rockstar in him… My dad is an incredible singer. I feel very happy when he sings because I love his voice and I think I do get my singing from him, not in the way of the voice, but the love for singing. When we talk, we are always talking about old songs. He loves classic rock, he loves the Woodstock era. We also love musicals,” she told PTI in an interview.

Shruti, 39, first sang at the age of six in her father’s film “Thevar Magan” (1992) and went on to build a successful career by singing in multiple languages, including Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi.

Beyond playback singing, Shruti is also an independent musician and fronts the alternative rock band The Extramentals. She has performed at several international music festivals. She has released English singles such as “Edge” (2020), “She Is A Hero” (2022), and “Monster Machine” (2023).

Shruti said that she often shares her songs with Haasan. She also revealed that Haasan got to know that she had sung “Vinveli Nayaga” for his recent film “Thug Life” just before the movie’s release.

“I don’t even tell him the script of the movies I’m doing but I will always be like ‘Hey pa, I wrote this song.’ or ‘Hey pa, me and the guys are jamming to this music, what do you think?’ So that has always been our bond but the funny thing is even he didn’t even know I was singing ‘Vinveli Nayaga’. It was a fun surprise.”

Shruti said she is happy to have a dual career as a musician and actor. She also believes that cinema has made her a better musician and songwriter.

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“I’ve always been that person who uses music as a character. I think my cinema influences my music much more than the other way around. I’ve changed as a musician because of cinema. I wouldn’t be half the musician I am with half the ideas I have if it wasn’t for working on film sets and playing characters and interacting with emotions which aren’t mine,” she said.

Shruti, who has featured in movies such as “3”, “Gabbar Singh”, “Srimanthudu”, “3”, “Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji” and “Salaar”, said cinema has broadened her creative range.

“When I was writing or singing, it was coming from a singular place of experience. But playing different characters makes you deal with emotions that aren’t comfortable to you, that aren’t yours, and that you have to own. And that by default changes your music and your style of writing.”

“Coolie”, directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, also came to her through music. She and Kanagaraj had earlier collaborated on a music video.

“I did a music video with him. I got him to appear in one of my independent music videos. We were just talking and he sprung this. It wasn’t like ‘Lokesh wants to meet you and you’re like ‘Oh my God, it is about a film’. It was just like a bomb that fell on my head. I like his movies and Rajini sir was there. So it was definitely a no-brainer for me right off the bat.”

“Coolie” is her first film in two years, and she has been working as an actor only sporadically in recent times

Shruti said her absence from Tamil cinema was not deliberate but a result of timing and choices. She took a two-year break between 2016 and 2018 to focus on herself and return to music, which she had set aside.

While she feels she has been balancing work across different industries, she acknowledged that audiences still expect more projects from her.

“I’m listening to one script after another. And I love that process of deciding what to do next. So I’m really stoked about it.

“There will be a bit of a gap because now I’ll have to get back into shooting something new. But I’ll be in front of the audiences as I’m going on tour with my band.

So there’ll be a lot more shows,” she said.