John Vijay (born 20 November 1976) is an Indian actor who plays villain and supporting roles in Tamil films.^[1] He has also worked in a few Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada films. He is well known for his performances in Oram Po (2007), Thillalangadi (2010), Mouna Guru (2011), Kalakalappu (2012) and Sarpatta Parambarai (2021).^[2][3]

John Vijay did his M.Sc. in Visual Communication from Loyola College, Chennai. Vijay also works as the head programme director of Radio One FM. John is the chief of 'H2O', an advertising agency with its office at Nungambakkam.^[4] He made his acting debut with the film Thalaimagan (2006).^[5]

Pushkar and Gayatri, who were his juniors in the Visual Communications course in Loyola College, offered him a role in their directorial debut Oram Po.^[6][7] His performance as "Sun of Gun" in the film was described by critics as "scene stealer, his antics bring the house down".^[8][9] His character in his debut film Oram Po was defined as a person who hails from Thoothukudi who had to come to Chennai and stay in Chennai on a permanent basis. He apparently learnt Madras Tamil for the film Oram Po.^[10]

John Vijay insisted that his fear of acting with big scale high-profile actors vanished after being cast by Mani Ratnam in Raavanan (2010).^[11] He played the role of a rogue police officer in Mouna Guru (2011) starring opposite Arulnithi and his performance was well received.^[3] He played a friend of Rajinikanth in Kabali (2016).^[11]

He has also trained a few emerging actresses to speak Tamil fluently by hosting a program titled Tamil Pesum Kadanayagi, and he insisted the reason to host such a program was to encourage Tamil actresses to bag national awards by speaking Tamil in a fluent manner.^[12]

In October 2018, singer Sriranjani Sundaram accused John Vijay of sexual misconduct as part of MeToo allegations. It was during the middle of the night in 2014 that Sriranjani narrated a sequence of events about her receiving phone calls from Vijay, apparently accusing Vijay of phone sex, with the latter allegedly pursuing a conversation with Sriranjani, although Sriranjani had told him that she would call back the next day.^[13] The incident unfolded just a month after both attended a fun interview together.^[14]