This time around an actress has got her way. Padmapriya has managed to convince the Actors association into banning director Sami of Uyir fame for a year.

This was meted out to the director by the producer's council after her case was heard. They found considerable reason to do so as they felt that the director 'slapping' the actress would bring ignominy to the Tamil film industry.

During the early days till about recently it has been an accepted norm in the film industry to get physically assaulted by the directors of the films they are a part of. Some actors like Pandian, Ravathy and Raadhika have been subjected to slaps and knocked on their head by Stalwarts like Bharathi Raja. K Balachander is known to hit his actors with a towel when they don't get their scenes right. It was considered a blessing then to get slapped by such stalwarts as it was perceived by actors as a part of the learning process, a time when most entrants were complete novices to acting. In today's time it is highly unacceptable considering that most entrants are well educated and can get the director's intentions when explained to them and directors have a choice too, they can avoid casting actors who they feel are totally inept at their job.

Sami can't be condoned for just one reason, Padmapriya is a proven actress and to come up with such a lame excuse was unpardonable. Such things are not very rare happenings even in these days but not many would go the distance that Padmapriya did. Sami however apologized to the council later this afternoon after a stubborn stand till then, demanding a public apology from Padmapriya. This didn't convince the council members enough to revoke the ban. Besides, the ban also included non-cooperation for Sami's movies from the film industry. They council also told the involved parties that they could work with each other after the ban ends if they could reconcile their differences. In the film industry there are no permanent friends or enemies, only time can tell if they would come to terms because at the end of the day it is the producer who is in the soup for no fault of his.