Siva Sankara Vara Prasad. Konidela, better known as Chiranjeevi, was born on 22nd August, 1955,at Narasapur, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is one of the top four actors as well as the unofficial number one actor of Telugu film Industry. His father is Venkat Rao and mother is Anjana Devi. He is very often referred to as "Mega Star". He has got two brothers. Nagendra babu and Pawan Kalyan. Nagendra Babu is a film producer while Pawan Kalyan is another famous actor.
Chiranjeevi entered the film industry with the film Pranam Khareedu in 1978. After this film he played a lot of minor and negative characters in films like Mosagadu, 49 Rojulu, Manavoori Pandavulu. It went on like this until he got the breakthrough with the film Khiladi. The film Khiladi, which released in 1983 in the direction of Kodandarami Reddy was a big hit. It gave him the required push to stay on the top along with some more top actors of that time. With films like Abhilasha (1983), Challenge (1984), Pasivadi Pranam (1987), Atthaku Yamudu Ammayiki Mogudu (1989) etc he succeeded in establishing a name of his own in the film industry. His streak continued into the 90's with films like Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari (1990), Kodama Simham (1990), Gang Leader (1991), Rowdy Alludu (1991), and Gharana Mogudu (1992). As with any actor, he also suffered some huge box office disasters like Mechanic Alludu (1993), S.P.Parshuram (1994), Big Boss (1995), and Rikshavodu (1995).
These failures made him very careful about choosing a story, banner, director etc and he took a considerable amount of time sizing what actually went wrong. In 1997 with the film "Master", he again started his success streak that continued with the films like Choodalani Vundi (1998), Bavagaru Bagunnara (1998), and Sneham Kosam (1999). Later in 2002 Chiranjeevi had one more release, Indra. This film turned out to be a huge hit and became the highest grossing film of that year. He won both the Nandi Award and Filmfare Best Actor Award for the film Indra. Later in 2003, he came out with another block buster "Tagore". It was also the highest grossing film of that year. His long-awaited "Anji" released in 2004, but it failed to record the success, despite the high expectations. But with the film Shankardada MBBS, he got another huge success. After this film he was again disappointed by the results of movies like Andarivadu and Jai Chiranjeeva. He also appeared in a guest role in the film style directed by Raghava Lawrence. However with the film Stalin he bounced back onto the track. Currently his film Shankardada Zindabad is on sets, which is the sequel of his previous hit Shankardada MBBS.
Chiranjeevi, in october 1998, founded the Chiranjeevi Charitable Trust(CCT). This trust includes Chiranjeevi Eye bank and Blood banks. It is the largest Blood and Eye bank in the state Andhra Pradesh. So far, the Blood bank has helped over 80,000 people and the Eye bank has helped over 1000 people. This trust has also won the award "Best Voluntary Blood Bank" by the government of Andhra Pradesh for the past 4 years. In 2006, he also founded the Chiranjeevi Charitable Foundation (CCF) which was inaugurated by The president of India Dr. Abdul Kalam. In 2006, Chiranjeevi received Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India, from The president of India Dr. Abdul Kalam. Later in November 2006, Chiranjeevi was honoured with a doctorate by Andhra University for his social work and for his services to the film industry.
With the fact that Chiranjeevi's son Ramcharan Teja's movie is going to release very soon, speculations are on the rounds that Chiranjeevi is going step out of the cine field and is going to play an active part in Charity and social service fields. So far Chiranjeevi has done a lot to the Telugu cinema field as a great actor and to the people by his Charitable trust. Whatever his decision may be, Let's hope he keeps doing the good deeds.
