About Me

An actor’s real life is as dramatic as his reel life and more son when one becomes an actor by chance.

I believe that what you are is a sum of countless memories of your past, people whom you have met and things you did while growing up. A lot of you know about me as Allu Arjun, the actor and I presume some of you are quite curious to know about my personal life, especially about my childhood and my life before I became an actor. From a normal middle class upbringing in Chennai to being known as ‘Stylish Star’ in Telugu Cinema, I have come a long way.

My grandfather, Allu Ramalingaiah garu, was one of the renowned actors in Telugu Cinema for almost 50 years.

For a long time, I was known as Allu Ramalingaiah’s grandson, then as Allu Aravind’s son, Chiranjeevi’s nephew before I made a name for myself. I feel proud that I am from family of such illustrious artists and being called as Allu Ramalungaiah’s grandson was pretty much my identity when we were based in Chennai. Despite being financially sound, I had a middle class upbringing and I thank my parents for being my grounded right from the begininng. I was born on April 8, 1982, to Allu Aravind and Nirmala, in Vijaya Hospital, Chennai. We are a family of five including two brothers of mine –Allu Venkatesh and Allu Sirish. We used to live in our grandparents house in H.No-14, Rama Krishna Street which has nown been converted into an apartment complex. I had an elder brother, Allu Rajesh, who passed away when I was two years old and I don’t really have any memories of him except for a few photographs. My uncle, Chiranjeevi garu used to live half a kilometer away from our home and my aunt used to live another half a kilometer away from there. Our three families were very close to eachother and altogether we were eight cousins including, Allu Venkatesh, me, Allu Sirish; Chiranjeevi garu’s daughters Sushmita (Honey), Srija (Sweety) and Charan; my aunt’s daughters Vidya and Deepthi.

I was pretty quiet during my childhood. From LKG to Class VII.

I studied in Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (PSBB) in Tirumal Pillai Road branch. All my brothers and cousins used to study in the same school and everyday we would travel in the same car to the school. The school used to get over by 3:30 PM or 4 PM and I used to go to practice gymnastics as it was my passion.I was also entusiastic about dance and when I was in my Class V or Class VI, I used to go to martial arts classes.

I was also a lot into drawing and learnt painting for a brief period of time. The school we studied in had a lot of Brahmin influence and some of those traits and values, which we were taught, continue to remain close to my heart. I had lot of friends who were Brahmins and I still keep in touch with them.

The school mostly consisted of students from middle & upper-middle class families and it was one of the best schools in Chennai. When it came to studies, I was a very poor student. Most of the times I used to end up getting the last or second last rank in the class. And every time, I used to pray that I shouldn’t come last. But fate had different plans. I failed in Class VII.

Soon, we moved to a new house and I had to move to a new school and eventually

I joined AMM Metriculation Higher Secondary School, where I studied from Class VII to Class XI. Again, I failed in Class IX and I was forced to write Class X exams privately. During this time I joined Murthy Tutorials. Apparently, Pawan Kalyan garu joined there for a brief period of time and everyone used to talk about him because, by then, he had become a big star. I have great memories from AMM including my share of love stories and fights! I think I studied so hard that I scored pretty well in my Class X and I felt really good about it since it had happened for the first time in my schooling days. I aimed for a distinction but that didn’t happen and I ended up with a first class. For the next two years, I was studying in St. Patrick’s College, Chennai. After my Class XII, I was a confused adolescent, like several others, about my future. I really didn’t know what to do and more so because I wasn’t thatgood at studies. I used to have a strange thoughts about being a piano teacher, an artist or even a gymnastics teacher since I was passionate about all of them. It was around this time that started dabbling with computer graphics. Back in 1996-1997 we used to have a personal computer which was very rate in those days. Apart from commercial usage, there were very few people who had an internet connection at home. Sirish was a lot into internet by then and my dad was quite enthusiastic about technology back in those days and he still is. During this time, I realized that I loved Computer Graphics, animation and multimedia in general. If could choose my career path, I knew that I wanted to take up CG/multimedia as a career.

Despite being from a filmy family, we were quite disconnected from movies.

Telugu films were hardly screened in theaters across Chennai. The only time when we used to watch films was when someone would screen previews for us and most of the times it used to be Chirajeevi garu’s films. I must add that Chiranjeevi garu has been a huge source of inspiration and has had a great influence on my right from my childhood. Some of my most memorable moments as a teenager were the summer holidays we spent visiting places where Chiranjeevi garu was shooting. Once, we went to Kerala where he was shooting for Alluda Majaka, another time it was a village near Rajahmundry during the shooting of Apathbandhavudu. For Pasivadi Pranam he was shooting in Kashmir, and for Kondaveeti Donga, he was shooting in Hogenakkal. And then we must have made countless trips to Ooty, Kodaikanal and Goa. My mother is from Vijayawada. So, in summer holidays we used to go either Vijaywada or wherever Chiranjeevi garu was shooting. When I see those films today, I still remember all those days when we used to play near from the shooting spot. Once, I remember, he had asked me to play a small role in Pratibandh. I did a small cameo as a shepherd boy. However, my first appearance was in the film, Vijetha. They needed a small boy and I was put in the frame just for a few minutes. I had no idea that I would become an actor one fine day. My entry into films was by chance and it was not a conscious decision. Despite these cameos, I never took acting seriously until we moved to Hyderabad.

On May 12, 2000, my life took a sudden turn and I wasn’t prepared for it. My father had decided to move to Hyderabad and it was the biggest destination shift for all of us. Although it still feels like as if it happened yesterday, I can’t forget what was going through my mind back then.
 
After having lived 18 years of my life in Chennai, I had to leaveeverything behind and move to this new city, ‘so called’ – Hyderabad, which I had visited only twice on summer vacations to be with Charan and Chiranjeevi garu. Compared to the metropolitan city that Chennai was back then, Hyderabad was much sober. Not today thought! It was a mental trauma because I had to leave all my friends. It was like starting a new life and I was very skeptical about it. I remember, my father and I used to discuss about this and he said, “I want you to be something big in the city”. When we first moved to Hyderabad, we lived in a rental apartment for six months. It was quite a hurdle because we had never lived in a small house before. As time passed by, this whole idea of living together seemed quite exciting. When I stepped out of my room, I could see my father, brothers, but in our palatial house back in Chennai, we never used to see each other so often. It was only for about six months, but we enjoyed it. And I knew that never in our lives, were we going to live like that and so, we relished every moment of it. Then we shifted to Sagar Society for 2-3 years. Meanwhile I joined a college and I was keen on pursuing a few courses in multi-media rather than sit in college all day. I hardly used to attend classes in college. I joined a multi-media school called Penta-4 located in Swapnalok Complex, Secunderabad and I used to go there every day for almost a year to improve my skills in animation. On the other hand, my association with film industry became more prominent because I was living in a city where I saw the ground reality of what my father was and what my grandfather was. We are in a land where we could actually see how much cinema meant to millions of people. I had realized that in Chennai we had lived a very private life and we were totally cut off from cinema. And now, the privacy didn’t exist anymore because everyone around us knew who we were. For a teenager, that was little difficult to cope up with. I started making new friends, met new people and got accustomed to this new culture. Also, my biggest hurdle in the city was Hindi. I didn’t known Hindi at all. And when I used to go shopping, I was forced to talk in Hindi because nobody used to understand Telugu. And I used to feel weird because despite being in Andhra Pradesh, I was forced to talk in Hindi.

As time flew by, I started getting more familiar with movies. Chiranjeevi garu knew that I could dance from a very young age. He needed some one to do a small cameo as a dancer in his film, Daddy and he asked me to do it. I did that character and it got a lot of name and fame. People started recognizing me and appreciated the work I had done. That’s when I started getting film offers. Suddenly, my thought process changed. I realized that it took two generations from my family to make a mark in an industry and I started my career in animation, its going to take a whole new generation to make it big. Already, I had people in my family who had climbed two steps and I thought it would be a wise decision to use the second step as a ladder and try my best to climb the third step. That’s when I decided to stay back and settle down in film industry. Honestly speaking, I never wanted to be an actor. I never even thought about it. But when I get closer to opportunities, I thought why not give it a shot. I wanted to be good at whatever I was doing. One thing I knew was that I knew nothing about films. I wanted to brush up my acting skills, martial arts and dancing. There was quite a lot of support from the family. My father has told Chiranjeevi garu that he is planning to shift to a new house. By then, the construction work of Chiranjeevi garu's new house was completed and then he suggested that we could move into that house, as he was moving to his new house.This was just before the release of Tagore. I guess his luck rubbed on me as well. The moment we shifted to this house, Arya happened. I lived there for 2-3 years and during this time I acted in Arya, Bunny and Happy and after that we shifted to our current house in Jubilee Hills Road No: 68. Interestingly, within 20 days of moving into this new house, Desamuduru had released and it was the biggest of my career back then. The success brought in a new wave of confidence in me and I was even happier that the new house, where we have been living for the past 4-5 years, has turned out to be quite lucky. This was just before the release of Tagore. I guess his luck rubbed on me as well. The moment we shifted to this house, Arya happened. I lived there for 2-3 years and during this time I acted in Arya, Bunny and Happy and after that we shifted to our current house in Jubilee Hills Road No: 68. Interestingly, within 20 days of moving into this new house, Desamuduru had released and it was the biggest of my career back then. The success brought in a new wave of confidence in me and I was even happier that the new house, where we have been living for the past 4-5 years, has turned out to be quite lucky.

As a family we are very close to each other and at the same time we respect each others privacy a lot. My father still knocks the door before entering our rooms. Another rule which we follow at our home is that we would never open each other’s packets or anything addressed to someone. We never take each other’s phones. We always give each person his/her privacy, although we live in the same house. I can leave a dairy in my hall and I can be confident that no one will touch it. A lot of people find it weird but I think respecting one’s privacy is a good thing to do.

2011 is turning out to be a memorable year for me. I got married to the love of my life, Sneha and I am lucky to be part of one of Telugu cinema’s most expensive films, Badrinath. I credit my family, people whom I have worked with and my fans as the reasons behind my success. I don’t know how my life is going to turn out in future but I have learnt some invaluable lessons from my life, so far. That you have to embrace every opportunity, face every problem and be extremely good at whatever you do. And I will.