Oduvil Unnikrishnan was a classic, versatile actor in Malayalam Industry. Unnikrishnan was born in 1944 to Krishnan Menon and Parukutty Amma. His house name is Oduvil later from his house name he got his screen name as Oduvil Unnikrishnan. He had a great interest in music and took vocal training under Kalamandalam Vasudeva Paniker, he also played the instruments like Mridangam and Tabla. He joined in K.P.A.C as a tabla artist .He had a great interest in music and finally that made him sang so many songs and he composed music for an album Parasuram Express. He also did music for an unreleased movie Sarvam Saha directed by Ravi Gupta.
His first movie was Drashanam directed by P.N Menon. He did many character as well as comic roles. Devasuram , Meleparambil Aanveedu, Sreekrishna Prundu, Ponn Muttyidunna Tharavu, Nizhalkuthu Nagaragalil Chennu Raparkkam , Aniyan Bava Chetan Bava etc were his famous movies. For Nizhalkuthu movie directed by
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
he got Kerala state best actor award in 2002.
Oduvil did a fantastic job in the movie Devasuram starred by Mohanlal in lead role and even though his role in the movie is small, it had a great effect. In that movie his character sung a song for Mohanlal’s character Neelakandan ‘Vande Mukunda Hare’ song and that was a heart touching song. Even though the song was sung by music director M G Radhakrishnan it feels that the song was actually sung by Oduvil itself. Even now itself whenever that song hears every Malayalee remembers about Oduvil. He had severe kidney problems and died on 27 May 2006.