Actor-politician and maybe Tamil Nadu's next chief minister Vijay, a megastar in South cinema, has surprisingly little or no presence in the Hindi film industry.

The Leo and Mersal star did a blink-and-miss appearance in the 2012 hit Rowdy Rathore, where he popped in for a less-than-a-minute dance cameo with actor Akshay Kumar and choreographer-director Prabhu Deva. In fact, in the song 'Chinta Ta Chita Chita', the South superstar had to be introduced as such by Akshay – 'Oh, superstar Vijay'. That was almost it.

Several of his Tamil blockbusters have been dubbed in Hindi and are now also available on streaming platforms with subtitles. These include big-budget actioners such as Master, Mersal, Leo and Bigil.

Some of his Tamil hits have also been remade in Hindi, most notably Varun Dhawan's Baby John, a remake of his 2016 action-thriller Theri, and Akshay Kumar's 2014 hit Holiday, which was adapted from Vijay's 2012 film Thuppakki.

The 51-year-old also took a leaf out of Hindi movies when he played Aamir Khan's much-loved character of a free-spirited, innovative engineering student from the blockbuster 3 Idiots in its 2012 Tamil remake Nanban.

He seemed clearly content with his success and demi-god status in Tamil cinema. This was quite unlike others such as Vijay Sethupathy, Allu Arjun, and Vijay Devarakonda and, of course, veterans Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, who have either starred in Hindi movies or become pan-India stars.