Karate Gopalan

Karate Gopalan is an Indian actor and film producer who works mainly in the Tamil movie industry. He was born in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. Moreover, Gopalan is a Karate master. He has achieved a 7th black belt degree in Karate. Karate Gopalan runs his Martial art academy, where he teaches Karate, Gymnastics, Yoga, Silambam, and Effective Defensive Practices. He is currently the Chief Secretary of India's Shoshinkai Shitoryu Karate. Since 1992, he had a dream of acting in films. Gopalan used to attend auditions for small roles but did not get any offers.

In 1994, he entered the Stunt union and started working under popular stunt masters, including Master Kanal Kannan. Gopalan has worked in stunt sequences of current actors’ movies such as Ajith, Vijay. He had a terrible accident during a tough scene in which Gopalan broke his leg. For some time, he was out of the movie industry. Gopalan decided to produce a film after his son confessed that he wanted to become an actor. He started looking for a solid script to invest in. During one of the script discussion sessions, the story of Veera Devan impressed Karate Gopalan, so he decided to produce it.

The director of the movie is Gopalan’s cousin. He roped in his son, Kaushik, who is an India Karate champion, to play as the leading actor in the film. Gopalan, in his early film career days, did not manage much opportunity to showcase his talent, so he decided to cast only fresh faces in the movie produced by him. The director could not find the right actor to act the antagonist, so he requested Karate Gopalan to play the role. After much hesitation, he accepted to portray the character. He invited over a hundred film producers for the movie's audio launch.

The media criticized the movie's title being casteist, but still, Gopalan dismissed the rumor and stated he did not intend to glorify any caste in the film, and they base the title on the protagonist's name in the movie. The film did not interest the audience and ended up as a failure in the box office. Karate Gopalan is a rationalist. He does not believe in caste or religion. Gopalan encourages his students to follow their dreams without looking back. He currently does not have movies in the pipeline. His focus is on training his students at the academy.