Ram Charan's box-office flop Orange slowly turned into a cult favourite
The son of Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi, Ram Charan could have coasted on the family name. Instead his career has swung between record-breaking hits such as Magadheera and RRR and outright bombs, including a Bollywood debut one critic compared to a wax statue, while earning a reputation as one of Indian cinema's best dancers.
Born in Madras on 27 March 1985 to Chiranjeevi and his wife Surekha, Charan is also the grandson, on his mother's side, of the comic actor Allu Ramalingaiah. He dropped out of a commerce degree in Hyderabad and trained at Kishore Namit Kapoor's acting school in Mumbai. His 2007 debut, Chirutha, directed by Puri Jagannadh, cast him as an ex-convict hunting his father's killer; reviewers singled out his grace in the dance numbers and noted that he avoided imitating his famous father. It won him the Filmfare award for best male debut in the South.
His second film made him a star. In S. S. Rajamouli's fantasy Magadheera (2009) he played two roles, showing off horse riding as well as dancing, and the film grossed over 150 crore rupees, remaining the highest-grossing Telugu film until 2013. The 2010 romance Orange, in which he played an Indian living in Australia, failed commercially, yet it later found a devoted audience and even drew comparisons with Howard Roark of The Fountainhead.
The misfires were real. His 2013 Hindi debut, a remake of Zanjeer opposite Priyanka Chopra, was panned, with critic Rajeev Masand calling him stiff as a wax statue, and it bombed. Bruce Lee: The Fighter (2015), for which he spent months with a personal trainer and took up karate, opened to his best first-day takings of the time but ended as a flop on a 60 crore budget. Dhruva (2016), in which he did his own stunts as a police officer chasing a corrupt scientist, restored his standing.
Bigger success followed with Rangasthalam in 2018 and RRR in 2022, now counted among the five highest-grossing Indian films; it brought him international attention and his third Filmfare award for best Telugu actor. He runs Konidela Production Company, founded in 2016, which backed his father's comeback film Khaidi No. 150, owns a polo team in Hyderabad and once co-owned the airline TruJet. He has appeared on Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list every year since 2013.
Source: Ram Charan
