Nagarjuna says his grandmother used to dress up father ANR like a girl

PTI Panaji: Veteran actor Nagarjuna on Friday said his grandmother always wanted to have a girl child and when that didn’t happen, she started dressing up his father and Telugu cinema star Akkineni Nageswara Rao as one. Nagarjuna recalled his father, fondly known as ANR, would look cute in plaits and believes that’s one of the factors that attracted the late legend to acting. At an in-conversation session at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), the actor shared many anecdotes about ANR, whose birth centenary was observed in September. The film gala is also celebrating the legacy of the Telugu cinema stalwart by showcasing a restored version of his 1953 movie “Devadasu”. “He came from a very humble family, a farmer’s family.

He was born near Andhra Pradesh (erstwhile part of the Madras residency), a village which didn’t have electricity. “My grandmother always wanted to have a woman child. She used to dress him up (like a woman) in plaits. He used to look very pretty and cute. We still have a photograph of him dressed as a girl. He looked exactly like my older sister Sathya. I think these were the things which led him to become an actor,” Nagarjuna said. ANR, whose seven-decade career includes diverse films such as “Vipra Narayana”, “Tenali Krishna”, “Sri Ramadasu”, “LailaMajnu”, and “Balaraju”, started out playing roles of women on stage.

“In those days women were not allowed to be an actor or act on stage. So, he started playing women’s roles. He first became a heroine on stage. “As fate took its turn, he was at a railway station when famous producer Ghantasala Balaramayya, who was sitting in train, saw him walking and said ‘nice eyes, nice nose’. Would you like to act? Rest, as they say, is history,” he said.