Menon was born to a Malayali father and a Tamil mother on 25 February 1973 in Ottapalam, a town in the Palakkad district of Kerala. Although born in Kerala he grew up in Anna Nagar, Chennai. He graduated from his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Mookambigai College of Engineering, Pudukkottai.

Early work, 2001

Menon was a student of Mechanical Engineering at Mookambigai College of Engineering in the batch of 1993, and his time there inspired to make his lead characters of Minnale, Vaaranam Aayiram and Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa, students of the same course. He claims to have been inspired by films such as Dead Poets Society and Nayakan and expressed his desire to his parents to change career path and become a filmmaker and consequently wrote his first film at his college hostel. His mother insisted he became an ad film maker by shooting various commercials and took an apprenticeship under filmmaker Rajiv Menon. He went on to work as an assistant director for Minsara Kanavu in 1997, in which he also appeared in a cameo role.

Menon launched a Tamil romance film O Lala in 2000 with the project eventually changing producers and title into Minnale (2001) with Madhavan, who was at the beginning of his career, being signed on to portray the lead role. About the making of the film, Menon revealed that he found it difficult as the team was new to the industry with only the editor of the film, Suresh Urs, being a prominent technician in the industry. Menon had come under further pressure when Madhavan had insisted that Menon narrated the story to his mentor, Mani Ratnam, to identify if the film was a positive career move after the success of his Alaipayuthey. Despite initial reservations, Menon did so and Ratnam was unimpressed; however Menon has cited that he thought that Madhavan "felt sorry" and later agreed to continue with the project. The film also featured Abbas and newcomer Reemma Sen in significant roles, whilst Menon introduced Harris Jayaraj as music composer with the film. The film was advertised as a Valentine's Day release in 2001 and told the tale of a young man who falls in love with the girl engaged to his ex-college rival and how he manages to get married to her. Upon release it went on to become a large success commercially and won positive reviews from critics with claims that the film had a lot of " lot of verve and vigour" and that it was "technically excellent".

The success of the film led to producer Vashu Bhagnani signing him on to direct the Hindi language remake of the film, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein (2001), which also featured Menon in a short role; having Madhavan with Dia Mirza and Saif Ali Khan added to the film. Menon was initially apprehensive but said it took "half an hour" to agree and against his intentions, the producer opted against retaining the technical crew of the original. He changed a few elements, deleted certain scenes and added some more for the version. However, in comparison, the film gained poor reviews with a critic citing that "the presentation is not absorbing" though stating that he " handled certain sequences with aplomb"; the film subsequently went on to become a below average grosser at the box office. The failure of the film left him disappointed, with Menon claiming in hindsight that the film lacked the simplicity of the original with the producer's intervention affecting proceedings. Later on in the year, it was reported that he was working on a film tentatively titled Iru Vizhi Unadhu, though the project did not develop into production. In 2011, the producer of the film approached him to remake Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein with the producer's son Jackky Bhagnani in the lead role, but Menon was uninterested with the offer.

Police duology, 2003–06

Gautham returned in 2003 by directing the realistic police thriller Kaakha Kaakha (2003) featuring Suriya, Jyothika and Jeevan in the lead roles. The film portrayed the personal life of a police officer and how his life is affected by gangsters, showing a different perspective of police in comparison to other Tamil films of the time. Menon revealed that he was inspired to make the film after reading articles on how encounter specialists shoot gangsters and how their families get threatening calls in return, and initially approached Madhavan, Ajith Kumar and then Vikram for the role without success, with all three actors citing that they did not want to play a police officer. The lead actress Jyothika asked Menon to consider Suriya for the role, and he was subsequently selected after Menon saw his portrayal in Nandha. He held a rehearsal of the script with the actors, a costume trial with Jyothika and then enrolled Suriya in a commando training school before beginning production, which he described as a "very planned shoot". The film consequently opened to very positive reviews from critics on the way to becoming another success for Menon, with critics labeling it as a "career high film". Furthermore, the film was described as "for action lovers who believe in logical storylines and deft treatment" with Menon being praised for his linear narrative screenplay.

Gautham Vasudev Menon subsequently remade the film in the Telugu language as Gharshana (2004) for producer Venkata Raju and went on to claim that the new version was better than the previous version and that his new lead actor Venkatesh was more convincing that Surya in the role. The film also featured actress Asin and Saleem Baig in prominent roles and went on to earn commercial and critical acclaim with reviewers citing that "film redeems itself due to the technical excellence and masterful craft of Gautham", drawing comparisons of Menon with noted film makers Mani Ratnam and Ram Gopal Varma. In July 2004, Menon also agreed terms to direct and produce another version of Kaakha Kaakha in Hindi with Sunny Deol in the lead role and revealed that the script was written five years ago with Deol in mind, but the film eventually failed to take off. Producer Vipul Shah approached him to direct the Hindi version of the film in 2010 as Force with John Abraham and Genelia D'Souza, and Menon initially agreed before pulling out again. Menon and the original producer, Dhanu, also floated an idea of an English-language version with a Chechnyan backdrop, though talks with a potential collaboration with Ashok Amritraj collapsed.

Gautham Vasudev Menon was then signed on to direct a venture starring Kamal Haasan and produced by Kaja Mohideen, and initially suggested a one-line story which went on to become Pachaikili Muthucharam for the collaboration. Kamal Haasan wanted a different story and thus the investigative thriller film Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006), was written with Jyothika, Kamalinee Mukherjee, Prakash Raj, Daniel Balaji and Saleem Baig added to the cast. The film told another episode from a police officer's life, with an Indian cop moved to America to investigate the case of psychotic serial killers before returning to pursue the chase in India. During the shooting, the unit ran into problems after the producer had attempted suicide and as a result, Kamal Haasan wanted to quit the project. Menon subsequently convinced him to stay on as they had taken advance payments. He has since revealed that unlike Kamal Haasan's other films, he did not take particular control of the script or production of the film. The film however had gone through change from the original script with less emphasis on the antagonists than Menon had hoped and he also revealed that scenes for songs were forced in and shot without him. The film released in August 2006 and went on to become his third successive hit film in Tamil and once again, he won rave reviews for his direction. Menon later expressed interest in remaking the film in Hindi with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role without the love angle, though the project fell through after discussions. In 2012, he re-began negotiations with producers to make a Hindi version of the film with Shahrukh Khan in the lead role. He had stated his intent on making a trilogy of police episode films, with a possible third featuring Vikram in the lead role, before completing it in 2015 with Yennai Arindhaal.

Success, 2007–08

His next project, Pachaikili Muthucharam (2007), based on the novel Derailed by James Siegel, featured Sarath Kumar and Jyothika in the lead roles and was released in February 2007. Initially the lead role was offered to Kamal Haasan who passed the opportunity, while actors Cheran and Madhavan declined citing date and image problems respectively. Menon met Sarath Kumar at an event where he cited he was looking to change his 'action' image and Menon subsequently cast him in the lead role. During production, the film ran into further casting trouble with Simran dropping out her assigned role and was replaced by Shobana after another actress, Tabu, also rejected the role. Shobana was also duly replaced by a newcomer, Andrea Jeremiah to portray the character of Kalyani in the film. The film was under production for over a year and coincided with the making of his previous film which was largely delayed. The film initially opened to positive reviews with a critic citing that Menon is "growing with each passing film. His style is distinctive, his vision clear, his team rallies around him and he manages to pull it off each time he attempts". However the film became a financial failure for the producer, Venu Ravichandran and in regard to the failure of the film, Menon went on to claim that Sarath Kumar was "wrong for the film" and that he tweaked the story to fit his image; he also claimed that his father's ailing health and consequent death a week before the release had left him mentally affected. In mid-2007, Menon announced and began work on a youth-centric film titled Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikaalam featuring Trisha and an ensemble of newcomers. Set in the backdrop of Chennai's booming IT industry, the team began its shoot in September 2007 and continued for thirty days but was later delayed and eventually shelved. In 2011, he revealed that the film was dropped because he felt the actors "needed to be trained", and would consider restarting the project at a later stage.

His next release, Vaaranam Aayiram (2008), saw him re-collaborate with Suriya, who played dual roles in the film. The film illustrates the theme of how a father often came across in his son's life as a hero and inspiration, and Menon dedicated the film to his late father who had died in 2007. The pre-production of the film, then titled Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikaalam began in 2003, with Menon planning it as a romantic film with Suriya as a follow-up to their successful previous collaboration, Kaakha Kaakha. Abhirami was signed and then dropped due to her height before a relatively new actress at the time Asin was selected to make her debut in Tamil films with the project. The first schedule of the film began in January 2004 in Visakhapatanam and consequently romantic scenes with Suriya and Asin were shot for ten days and then a photo shoot with the pair. The film was subsequently stalled and was eventually relaunched with a new cast including Divya Spandana, Simran and Sameera Reddy in 2006 with Oscar Ravichandran stepping in as producer, who opted for a change of title. Menon has described the film as "autobiographical and a very personal story and if people didn’t know, that 70% of this is from my life". Throughout the film-making process, Menon improvised the script to pay homage to his late father by adding a family angle to the initial romantic script, with Suriya eventually playing dual roles. The film's production process became noted for the strain and the hard work that Suriya had gone through to portray the different roles with production taking close to two years. The film released to a positive response, with critics heaping praise on Suriya's performance while claiming that the film was "just a feather in Gautam's hat" and that it was "a classic". The film was made at a budget of 150 million rupees and became a commercial success, bringing in almost 220 million rupees worldwide. It went on to become Menon's most appreciated work till date winning five Filmfare Awards, nine Vijay Awards and the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil for 2008 amongst other accolades. Post-release of the film, Menon had a public fallout with his regular music composer Harris Jayaraj and announced that they would no longer work together, though they later returned in 2015 for Yennai Arindhaal. In late 2008, during the making of Vaaranam Aayiram, he had signed on with Sivaji Productions to direct Ajith Kumar and Sameera Reddy in an action film titled Surangani. Menon later pulled out of the commitment citing that the producers were not willing to