Long before the arc lights, Muhammad Kutty Panaparambil Ismail stood in a Manjeri courtroom, arguing criminal cases for a living. Born on 7 September 1951 in Chandiroor, Alappuzha, and raised in neighbouring Kottayam, he studied for his LLB at Government Law College, Ernakulam, after an undergraduate degree at Maharaja's College. 

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For two years, he practised as a criminal lawyer, a disciplined, procedural world of evidence and cross-examination. Then, almost on impulse, he walked away from it, choosing instead the far less certain pull of cinema. He would later describe himself, with some irony, as an "accidental" lawyer who had wanted to act all along.

Where the name came from

The man audiences know is not, strictly, a stage name in the theatrical sense. Mammootty is a hypocorism, a shortened, affectionate form of Muhammad, the first part of his given name, Muhammad Kutty. 

In Kerala's Muslim households, such pet names are common, softer, more familiar versions of formal names used at home and among friends long before anyone becomes famous. 

Mammootty simply carried his childhood name onto the screen and let it become his professional identity, so that the actor and the boy from Chandiroor were, in name at least, never really separated. 

It is a detail that distinguishes him from many stars who adopt entirely invented screen personas: his name records where he came from rather than erasing it.

The switch to cinema brought no immediate stardom. While still a law student, Mammootty took an uncredited role in the 1971 film Anubhavangal Paalichakal, followed by years of small, forgettable........

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