EARLY LIFE :
Prakash Raj was born on 26 March 1965
Bangalore, Mysore State, India. Karnataka. Prakash Raj was born in Bangalore on 26 March 1965 to a Tulu father and a Kannada mother. His brother is Prasad Raj, who is also an actor. He completed schooling at St. Joseph’s Indian High School and joined St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bangalore. Actress Geetha introduced Prakash Raj to prominent Tamil film director K. Balachander. Prakash Raj changed his surname to ‘Raj’ upon K. Balachander’s advice; he is still called Prakash Rai in his home state, Karnataka.
CAREER :
With Dilip in 2005, Thekkekara Superfast in 2003, Keerthichakra in 2006, Amal Neerad’s Anwar and Shyamaprasad’s sensational movie Elecktra in 2010. For most of his Mollywood movies, he will render his voice. He was also seen in the movie Achayans along with Jayaram.
He acted in many Telugu films, including Antahpuram (1998), which earned him a National Film Award – Special Jury Award / Special Mention.
He played an essential role in Venkat Prabhu’s Saroja. In 2008, he produced a film titled Abhiyum Naanum and played an important character. He remade the movie in Kannada as Naanu Nanna Kanasu.
Prakash Raj also acted in a 2004-released multi-starrer hit film Khakee along with Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar & Tushar Kapoor, playing Assistant Commissioner of Police Shrikant Naidu, Angre’s central mole in the police force. Since Wanted (2009), Prakash Raj has been a regular villain in Hindi Bollywood movies, including Singham, Dabangg 2, Mumbai Mirror (2013), and Policegiri.
He acted with actor Kamal Haasan in Vasool Raja MBBS, a critical and commercial success. Then, he paired again with Kamal Haasan in Thoongaa Vanam (2015). He acted in the Telugu movie Bharat Ane Nenu (2018). He will be seen in Major, directed by Sashi Kiran Tikka.
Prakash took on the mantle of director with Naanu Nanna Kanasu in Kannada in 2010, for which he was the joint producer. The film completed 125 days successfully in theatres across Karnataka, becoming the year’s biggest hit. He was nominated for his first film in the Filmfare South “Best Director” category.
He then directed the Telugu and Tamil bilingual film Dhoni. In 2014, he led the multilingual film Oggarane (in Kannada), Ulavacharu Biryani (in Telugu) and Un Samayal Arayil (in Tamil)
Although the Tamil and Telugu versions did not do any miracles at the box office, the Kannada version became the runaway blockbuster hit of the year.
Prakash became a film producer beginning with the Tamil film Dhaya (2002), in which he starred with actress Meena. It earned him a Special Jury National Award for his performance. He later produced films in Tamil, such as Naam (2003), Azhagiya Theeye (2004), Kanda Naal Mudhal (2005), Poi (2006), Mozhi (2007), Velli Thirai and Abhiyum Naanum, which won many Tamil Nadu State Awards in 2008, and Inidhu Inidhu in 2010.
The first non-Tamil film he produced was his directorial debut in Kannada, Naanu Nanna Kanasu, a remake of his own Tamil production Abhiyum Naanum, for which he was the joint producer, along with his long-time Bengaluru theatre friend, Kannada director-producer B. Suresha.
In 2011, he acted and jointly produced the Kannada film Puttakkana Highway, again with Suresh, who directed the film. It was a milestone in Prakash’s production career since Puttakkana Highway won him the National Award for Best Regional Film for 2010–2011 and an award in the fourth Bengaluru International Film Festival of 2011. In 2011, he produced the Tamil version of the Tamil-Telugu bilingual Payanam 2011, starring Nagarjuna Akkineni and himself. In 2012, he had two Tamil films, Mayilu and Dhoni. In 2013, he produced a Telugu-Tamil bilingual film, Gouravam. He made multilingual films Oggarane (Kannada), Ulavacharu Biryani (Telugu) and Un Samayal Arayil (Tamil) in 2014. Oggarane became a huge blockbuster hit that year.
PERSONAL LIFE :
Prakash Raj married actress Lalitha Kumari in 1994. They had two daughters, Meghana and Pooja, and a son, Sidhu, who died in 2004. The couple divorced in 2009. Later, he married choreographer Pony Verma on 24 August 2010. They have a son, Vedhanth born in 2015. Prakash Raj identifies himself as an atheist
