Akkineni Nageswara Rao

Born: 20 September 1924

Died: 22 January 2014

• He was widely known as ANR, was an Indian film actor and producer, known for his work predominantly in Telugu cinema.
• He starred in many landmark films in his seventy five-year careers, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the history of Indian cinema.
• He is considered one of the greatest and most successful actors of Indian cinema and one of the two pillars of Telugu Cinema, along with N.T.Rama Rao.
• He was one of the instrumental figures in moving the Telugu cinema industry from Madras to Hyderabad in the early 1960s.
• He established Annapurna Studios in 1975 to provide infrastructural support to the Telugu film industry in Hyderabad.
• He later started the Annapurna International School of Film and Media within Annapurna Studios in 2011.
• He is known for his path-breaking work in biographical films; He essayed the Tamil saint Thondaradippodi Alvar in the 1954 film Vipra Narayana; Tenali Rama in the 1956 film Tenali Ramakrishna, which received the All India Certificate of Merit for Best Feature Film; Kalidas (the Sanskrit poet of Ujjain) in the 1960 film Mahakavi Kalidasa; the 12th Century Sanskrit poet Jayadeva of Odisha in the 1961 film Bhakta Jayadeva; the Kannada sculptor Amarashilpi Jakanachari in the 1964 film Amara Shilpi Jakkanna; the Marathi saint Tukaram in the 1971 film Bhakta Tukaram; Kabir in the 2006 film Sri Ramadasu; Valmiki in the 2009 film Sri Rama Rajyam.
• Similarly, he played many famous mythological figures such as Lord Vishnu in Chenchu Lakshmi; Narada in Bhookailas and Arjuna in Sri Krishnarjuna Yuddhamu.

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