Vijay Antony

Frances Antony Cyril Raja (born 24 July 1975) known professionally as Vijay Antony, is an Indian music composer, playback singer, actor, film editor, lyricist, audio engineer, and filmmaker working predominantly in Tamil cinema.

He made his debut as music composer in 2005.

He is the first Indian Music Director to win the 2009 Cannes Golden Lion for the song Naaka Mukka advertising film in the Best Music category.

He won the award in 2009 for the "Nakka Mukka" commercial (for The Times of India) in the Best of Music category.

The song was played at the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

He made his acting debut film Naan in 2012.

He is best known for his roles in action thriller films such as Naan (2012), Salim (2014)

In 2015, he starred in the romantic comedy India Pakistan for which he wasn't the music director.

and Pichaikkaran (2016).

Vijay Antony was born in Vadakkankulam, Tirunelveli District.

When he entered the media and film industry, he had picked Agni as his stage name, but this was changed to Vijay by S. A. Chandrasekhar who had commented that Agni was not lucky and christened him after his son Vijay (actor).

Vijay Antony's acting debut was in the crime thriller Naan where he played the lead role.

The film's standalone sequel titled Salim, an action thriller, was his next project as an actor, for which he also composed music.

Both the films were sleeper hits.

In 2016, he chose to star in the action thriller Pichaikkaran (2016), collaborating with his Dishyum director Sasi.

It became a commercial success,

with overall collections nearing 40 Crore.

The Telugu dub Bichagadu was a bigger success than the original.

His next was Saithan, an action thriller directed by debutant Pradeep Krishnamurthy.

He appeared in the 2017 political action thriller Yaman directed by Jeeva Shankar.

Produced by A. Subaskaran under the banner Lyca Productions & Vijay Antony Film Corporation, it starred Miya and Thiagarajan.

The film was released on 24 February 2017.

His next film Annadurai in the same year was an action drama.

It tells the story of two brothers of contrasting characters whose separate lives are affected when fate intervenes in their lives.

In 2018, he starred in Kaali, a period action film directed by Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi and Thimiru Pudichavan, an action film directed by Ganeshaa.

In 2019, he starred in Kolaigaran, an action thriller directed by Andrew Louis and featuring Arjun Sarja.

Antony was brought up by his mother after his father's death by suicide when he was 7.

He is not a trained musician, but started his career as a sound engineer and later became a music composer.

After completing his tertiary education, he established an audio studio called Audio Infotainment and worked there as a sound engineer.

In his early days as a music composer, he composed jingles for advertisements, and notable background scores for television shows by conducting research on sound engineering.

His music composing venture in movies arrived when Oscar Ravichandran approached Antony to compose music for his film Dishyum, but his music composer debut in movies happened through Sukran, as it was released first.

Antony is married to Fatima Vijay Antony, and they had two daughters.

The elder daughter died by suicide on 19 September 2023 at the age of 16 in their home in Chennai.

Antony has a well-known great-grandfather, Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai, who was a Tamil poet, novelist, and social worker and is remembered for his authorship of Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram, recognized as the "first modern Tamil novel."

Vedanayagam's ideals of women's liberation and education are reflected in this novel.

Antony is the first Indian to win a Cannes Golden Lion award.