After making his debut in Sangili (1982), Prabhu played various leading and supporting roles, earning the Best Actor award recognition by the Tamil Nadu State for his portrayal in Chinna Thambi (1991).

Prabhu has given opportunity to more than 30 debutant directors, including Seeman, R. V. Udayakumar, Gangai Amaran, Pandiarajan, Raj Kapoor, G. M. Kumar, Panchu Arunachalam, Velu Prabhakaran, K. Subash, Sivachandran, R. K. Kalaimani and Cheyyar Ravi.

Subsequently, the following period saw a series of commercial successes in 1988 for the actor, notably S. P. Muthuraman's Guru Sishyan with Rajinikanth, Mani Ratnam's Agni Natchathiram with Karthik and P. Vasu's family drama En Thangachi Padichava.

[8] Prabhu then made another career change and began accepting film offers in which he would play a supporting rather than the leading role and featured alongside Kamal Haasan and then Rajinikanth in two big budget ventures Vasool Raja MBBS (2004) and his home production Chandramukhi (2005).

[9] Since then, he has gained acclaim portraying characters including a caring guardian in Unakkum Enakkum, Thaamirabharani and Ayan, while he has also been seen in detective roles in action films, notably Billa (2007) and then Kanthaswamy (2009).

[11] The director Sakthi Chidambaram has attempted a sequel Charlie Chaplin 2 (2019) sixteen years later which has nothing in common with the original including comedy excepting for the two male leads.

Prabhu himself denied a suicide attempt, saying he was cleaning his father's gun when he was injured; he was found writhing in pain after a gunshot was heard, although no serious injury happened.