Balu Varghese is an Indian film actor who predominantly works in the Malayalam film industry. He began his acting career as a child actor in Chanthupottu (2005). His first major role came in director
Jean Paul Lal`s
Honey Bee (2013). Since then he has appeared in movies like
Oru Second Class Yathra (2015),
Aana Mayil Ottakam (2015),
Style (2016),
Darvinte Parinamam (2016),
King Liar (2016),
Marubhoomiyile Aana (2016),
Kavi Uddheshichathu..? (2016) and
Ezra (2017). He`s also set to reprise his role from Honey Bee in
Jean Paul Lal`s sequel
Honey Bee 2: Celebrations (2017), which has
Asif Ali,
Lal and
Bhavana co-starring.
Early Life Balu Varghese was born in Ernakulam, Kerala, India to Varghese EJ and Neena Varghese on 27 October 1991. He is the nephew of Malayalam actor, director, writer and producer,
Lal. Music director
Alex Paul is his uncle.
He has a degree in Bachelors of Computer Application. He`s currently doing a long distance MBA course in Marketing Management.
Movie Career Balu Varghese debuted playing a younger Indrajith in the superhit movie, Chanthupottu (2005). The movie was directed by his uncle, Lal. He followed that up by playing a young S. Raveendran Pillai in director/actor
Madhupal`s Thalappavu (2008).
Balu`s first big break came with the movie Honey Bee (2013). The movie was directed by his cousin Jean Paul Lal, director Lal`s son. The movie was a commercial hit. The same year he acted in two other movies- Bicycle Thieves with Asif Ali, Aparna Gopinath and Salim Kumar and Happy Journey which had Jayasurya and Aparna Gopinath in the lead.
In Jean Paul Lal`s
Hi I`m Tony (2014), his father, Lal played the antagonist while
Asif Ali,
Miya,
Biju Menon and
Lena Abhilash played other prominent characters. Balu had a cameo in the movie. He was also a part of the surprise hit
Ithihasa (2014). The movie directed by
Binu.S had
Anusree,
Shine Tom Chacko and
Swapna Menon in the lead. In 2014 Balu also starred alongside
Fahadh Faasil,
Niveda Thomas and
Renji Panicker in
Santosh Nair`s
Money Ratnam. The movie was loosely based on the 2007 Bollywood film
Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (2007). 2015 was a lukewarm year for Balu acting wise. He had movies like Namaste Bali (2015),
Onnam Loka Mahayudham (2015), Aana Mayil Ottakam (2016) and
Oru Second Class Yathra (2016), which were critically trashed and commercially unsuccessful.
In 2016 Balu tasted success again with movies like
King Liar which had
Dileep and
Madonna Sebastian,
Darvinte Parinamam with
Prithviraj Sukumaran and
Chandini Sreedharan, and
Inspector Dawood Ibrahim with
Jayasurya and
Sshivada. He also had other critically and commercially trashed movies like
Style (2016) with
Unni Mukundan,
Marubhoomiyile Aana (2016) with
Biju Menon and
Kavi Uddheshichathu..? (2016) with
Asif Ali.
In 2017`s horror superhit
Ezra, Balu had a cameo. The movie directed by
Jayakrishnan had
Prithviraj Sukumaran,
Priya Anand and
Tovino Thomas in the lead. Balu is set to reprise his role in the sequel to
Jean Paul Lal`s
Honey Bee 2: Celebrations (2017). His other releases includes Ladoo (2018), Puzhikkadakan (2019) and Happy Sardar (2019).