Acting debut in Leader ( 2010-2012) Acclaimed Telugu filmmaker Shekar Kammula was the first person to cast Rana Daggubati in a lead role in his political drama Leader. The movie saw him appearing alongside a strong female cast consisting of Richa Gangopadhyay ,Priya Anand and Suhasini Mani Ratnam in .. Read More
Acting debut in Leader ( 2010-2012) Acclaimed Telugu filmmaker Shekar Kammula was the first person to cast Rana Daggubati in a lead role in his political drama Leader. The movie saw him appearing alongside a strong female cast consisting of Richa Gangopadhyay ,Priya Anand and Suhasini Mani Ratnam in the lead. The movie had him donning the character of a son who is left to fend for himself as his chief minister of a state on a fine morning taking over his father’s position, which leads to bizarre revelations about the local political setup and the rest of the movie deals with his transformation to an over the top politician. Rana Daggubati was seen emoting the fluctuations in the character arc of the protagonist with utmost maturity and conviction and the movie panned out with highly positive reviews and was also one of the highest grossers of the year 2010 and Daggubati was seen maintaining the star status of his rich family lineage and garnered him a lot of attention with him going on to win The Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut for the year. Array of other releases ( 2011- 2012) However after a dream like debut in his home turf, Rana Daggubati followed up by starring in the Bollywood flick amidst other stars like Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu. The crime thriller helmed by Rohan Sippy saw him in a major supporting role and he was heavily praised for his thunderous screen presence in his Bollywood debut and the movie went on to be a success both critically and commercially and got him another Award for Best Male Debut at the Zee Cine Awards of 2011. Daggubati soon came back to Telugu cinema, joining hands with ace commercial filmmaker Puri Jagannadh in the romantic drama Nenu Naa Rakshasi in 2011. The movie was also Daggubati’s maiden romantic flick and saw him playing a professional assassin opposite Ileana D'Cruz in the lead. The movie however turned out to be major underperformer and was Daggubati’s first flop after a flying start for his acting career in the previous outings and he emerged with poor reviews for his part, where a portion of the critics and movie goers considered him to being too “plastic” at times with his expressions and a rendition of emotional scenes mainly. Daggubati came back in the year 2012 with the romcom Naa Ishtam co-starring with Genelia D’Souza. The movie which saw him playing a character with a highly selfish mould whose life undergoes great changes after meeting and getting to know a girl could only become a mediocre flick among the critics but was a good performer in the box office. Later the same year in 2012 he went back to Bollywood sharing screen this time around with Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt in the action flick Department , where he appeared as a brave and honest cop who is recruited to a hit squad led by Sanjay Dutt intended to deal with the Mumbai Underworld. The movie was an above average fair with good reviews and nothing in spectacular on screen for Daggubati other than being his usual self. His last release for 2012 was the action drama Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum, where he paired with Nayanatara in the lead. The movie was a big break for him as it went on to fetch widespread acclaim and was a super hit outing. He began his 2013 by making a small cameo in Ranbir Kapoor’s blockbuster romcom Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and followed suit with yet another special appearance in Siddarth’s Telugu film Something Something where he played himself and ended his special appearance streak with Ajith’s Tamil action thriller Arrambam which was Daggubati’s official Tamil debut. Baby was his next major release was Neeraj Pandey’s spy thriller Baby, which had him playing a cop alongside Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher as special agents of a fictional group called “Baby” formed to counter terrorism. The movie saw him playing second fiddle to Kumar’s character as his trusted lieutenant which is a clichéd mould in usual action movies but Daggubati was able to bring a new flavour to the character and the rave reviews and success of the movie led to him being noted in mainstream Bollywood films. Career best role in Baahubali ( 2015) The year 2015 was a major turnaround for Daggubati as he was cast as the main antagonist in S.S Rajamouli’s epic historical drama Baahubali: The Beginning , which boast of an ensemble star cast led Prabhas , Tamannah, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan and Nassar among others. The multilingual epic which was released in two parts saw Daggubati playing the negative character King Bhallala Deva/ Pallvalathevan who carries deep rooted childhood hatred towards the protagonist played by Prabhas due to the latter’s excellence in all fields and his good name among the people. The movie saw him coming up with a stellar performance imbibing the emotional and physical aspects of the villain character with his imposing screen presence. The movie saw Daggubati catapult to International acclaim with the movie going on to achieve phenomenal critical reception and panning out to be the biggest grosser in the history of Indian cinema and also had premieres at all major countries and was also the biggest budget movie made in India with a sequel salted to release in 2017. Recent films ( latter 2015-2016) He followed up by appearing in yet another Big budget Telugu historical epic along with Allu Arjun and Anushka Shetty in the lead with him appearing in a pivotal role and the movie too had a good run. His next releases were the successful Tamil movies Bangalore Naatkal and InjiIduppazahgi. Daggubati’s is all set to reprise his original role in the second instalment of Baahubali and his other upcoming releases are the bilingual War film The Ghazi Attack; in Hindi and Telugu , Telugu film Nene Raju Nene Mantri, MadaiThiranthu and EnnaiNokiPaayumThota in Tamil ,all set to release in 2017.