Actor Rana Daggubati, who will finish 11 years as an actor this year, opened up about the initial struggles that he faced once he entered the film industry and revealed that he could not relate to college-based film stories since he had not been to college.
“When I came into the industry, there was nothing, no alternatives. We only had mainstream cinema and I had very little to choose from. I am not someone who did regular love stories. I didn’t go to college so I never connected with college stories either. I was not somebody who was a big fan of regular, commercial cinema that was set on patterns of revenge, action and pieces like that,” Rana said.
Rana, who is Dadasaheb Phalke Award-winning producer D. Rama Naidu’s grandson and Telugu superstar Venkatesh’s nephew, made his debut as an actor in the Telugu political drama Leader in 2010. He made his Bollywood debut in Rohan Sippy’s multi-starrer Dum Maaro Dum a year later. Ever since, he has mostly been active in Telugu cinema but has occasionally worked in Bollywood and Tamil films.
The actor, whose role as the antagonist Bhallaladeva in the blockbuster Bahubali films brought him pan-Indian recognition, says he never considers language a barrier while signing projects.
“I have never kept language as a barrier. All of it eventually came and fell into where I am today, in my comfort zone,” he says.
Over the past decade in Bollywood, after Dum Maaro Dum, Rana has worked in the films Baby and Department, besides essaying cameos in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Housefull 4, and Welcome To New York.
The actor believes this is the best time to tell new stories on screen. “Now, I get many stories whether it is Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi. So, I think it’s beautiful whether you are a filmmaker or an artiste. Definitely, there was never a better time than today for storytelling,” Rana said.
The actor had his latest Telugu film Aranya released on Friday. The multilingual film is titled Kaadan in the Tamil version. The movie also has a Hindi version titled Haathi Mere Saathi, which got postponed due to the fresh surge in COVID-19 cases in Mumbai.
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