South superstar Nagarjuna comes from a famous family. His father Nageshwar Rao Akkineni was also a big star of the South. During the International Film Festival of India 2024 going on in Goa, he recalled his father’s journey. Nagarjuna told that his father Nageshwar Rao was born in a small village. He came from a farmer family and his journey to become an actor was quite different from others.
Nagarjuna talked about his father
Nagarjuna said, ‘He came from a very humble family. He was a farmer’s family. From a village where there was no electricity. My grandmother always wanted to have a daughter, but there were no girls there. So she used to dress my father in girls’ clothes. I think perhaps these were the things that made him become an actor later.
She used to dress him in girls’ clothes, make a ponytail for him and he looked very cute. In those days women were not allowed to act on stage. So he started playing women’s, girls’ roles. He became a heroine on stage for the first time. He was very young then, maybe 15 years old. I still have a photo of him in a girl’s look. In that, he looks exactly like my elder sister Satya.’
Nageshwar Rao Akkineni’s luck changed one day. He met a famous producer at a railway station. Nagarjuna said about this, ‘As luck threw its dice, he was at a railway station. A famous producer saw him walking and said, hey this boy has beautiful eyes, a nice nose. He called the boy to him and asked if he wanted to act. What happened after that has been recorded in history.’
He further said, ‘This was in 1944. He had shifted to Chennai with his brother. My grandfather had passed away by then, so his elder brother was like a father to him. My father used to walk by swinging his waist. This was acting for him because he had played the role of a girl in drama and on stage. People started making fun of him for this, due to which he was very sad.’
Nageshwar Rao wanted to commit suicide
Nagarjuna told that Nageshwar wanted to kill himself but it could not happen. The actor told, ‘He went to Marina Beach in Chennai and he said that he wanted to commit suicide because he was being made fun of a lot. He told me that he even went waist deep in water. But seeing the waves, he changed his mind and decided that he will prove everyone wrong and came back. He corrected himself and then he played the character of Shri Ram in that film.’
Along with his gait, Nageshwar also changed his voice. Nagarjuna told about this, ‘It was also said that his voice was very weak. So he would wake up in the morning and go to the beach and someone told him that if you smoke a cigar, your voice will become more rough. So he used to smoke a cigar and then shout on the sea for 10 to 20 minutes so that his voice would become heavy. There was no dubbing at that time, so whatever was there was your own voice.’
