if there was one film that mirrored the madras of the 1900s it has to be madrasapattinam the vijay directorial starring arya in the lead also introduced amy jackson to the indian film industry as the period love story celebrates 10 years today we spoke to vijay and amy whos planning to host a premiere of the film at her uk home for her family and virtually invite the cast and crew about what went behind the making of the filmits 10yearsofmadrasapattinam what does that mean to you vijay it doesnt feel like 10 years its a special film for all of us the tough days of shooting and all those sleepless nights but the effort was worth it we experimented and went with our instinct and that instinct worked people say madrasapattinam is one of my best works till date i dont know if i should be happy or sad that i havent made something better than thatamy it was my very first experience of india ive never stepped out of europe before it was 10 years ago and so much has gone on since then but madrasapattinam holds the biggest space in my heart it changed my life forever 281910yearsofmadrasapattinam madrasapattinam was a difficult movie to make but it changed our lives foreverhow did the film happenvijay it all started when i narrated a script to cameraman nirav shah sir and he took me to arya it was a dream film for all of us which we were able to achieve because of kalpathi aghoram sir he was the backbone for the project he and arya literally made it happen i was not a big director and arya was growing as an actor then so at that point to invest such a huge budget in our film required conviction amys character drives the whole script and i knew that once i got the right person for the character everything will fall in place its gods blessing that we found amyamy no its gods blessing that i found you guys so was amy the first choice for the rolevijay you always aim for bigger things and we were trying for hollywood actresses because i even approached vanessa hudgens through our agents but i always say amy was born for the film i saw a picture of miss teen world on the net i didnt know her name but i told my uk agent i wanted to meet this girl when i come to london i knew she was my heroine before even meeting amy i showed arya the photo and said this was the heroine he was bowled over amy i got a call from my agent saying a director from india wants to meet with you i said im not an actress i cant act he said that they had a character and they wanted me to act out a few scenes but i was still skeptical nevertheless i went read the story and it was