[2] P. Vasu's father, Nedumbaal Moothedathu Peethambaram, a Malayali from Irinjalakuda Thrissur, worked as a make-up man for M. G. Ramachandran and N. T. Rama Rao in their films during his time.

Vasu started his career with Santhana Bharathi as a co-director and made films such as Panneer Pushpangal (1981), Madhu Malar (1981), Mella Pesungal (1983), Sahasame Jeevitham (1984) and Needhiyin Nizhal (1985).

[6][7] During his career, films like Panakkaran (1990), Nadigan (1990), Chinna Thambi (1991), Mannan (1992), Walter Vetrivel (1993) and Sethupathi IPS (1994) have become blockbusters.

The director went through a career slump in the mid-1990s after a series of failures, through his high budget romantic musical Love Birds (1996).

His directed films Apthamithra (2004) went on to cross the one-year mark, while legendary Chandramukhi (2005) has had a record run of 800 days and more.

He completed remaking the film in Telugu titled Nagavalli (2010) (Chandramukhi 2), features Venkatesh in the lead role.

[12] Soon after the grand success of Chandramukhi, P Vasu was initially supposed to sign Kamal Haasan for a film featuring him in triple action roles.

However, the supposed cast denied the reports as baseless and P. Vasu postponed the film, citing a delay in production.

[17] Similarly in early 2014, P. Vasu released an official statement claiming that his next film would be an animatronics venture titled Aishwaryavum Aayiram Kaakkavum and that Aishwarya Rai would feature in the leading role.

He won state awards for three years in a row from 1990, for Best Screenplay and Dialogues in Nadigan, in 1991 as Best Director in Chinna Thambi.