Actor Ram Charan Teja realised his desire to act during his final year in college. He explains to Shrabasti Mallik that being the son of Chiranjeevi helped him take his first steps in the industry but he had to work hard to make his own stand
A superstar father, check. Fame, popularity and success, check. Several runway hot movies in his kitty, check. Owning a polo team and starting an airline, check. There are very few things in life that Ram Charan Teja complains about. In fact he is quite satisfied and humbled by the adoration he receives from his fans.
One might not know him that well in Bollywood but down south, he shares the same pedestal as Ranbir Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan. He is the son of South Indian superstar Chiranjeevi but he does not carry that air around him. In fact, when we met him at the Taj Mahal Hotel during his recent trip to the Capital to launch an app for Apollo Hospitals, he came off as a rather charming individual — grounded, reserved, humble and soft spoken.
Teja is popularly known as ‘Mega Power Star of Telugu Cinema’ and it has taken him quite some years to arrive at this juncture. And he says with utmost conviction that he is good at what he does. “It has been a wonderful journey — right from when I took my first steps in films to where I have reached now. There have been a lot of ups and a few downs. But overall it has been a fun ride for me and I am enjoying every bit of it,” said the actor who still, after so many decades in the field, feels like pursuing a hobby. “I don’t look at it as work,” he nodded to himself.
Growing up in a family of actors can leave a strong impression in a child’s mind but Teja shared that his parents always kept a reality check on him. “I kind of grew up in a bubble,” he put it. As a child, he was not allowed to accompany his father to shooting locations and film magazines were a strict no-no. “They were not allowed in the house, so I never had anything that could inspire me to become spoilt or become a brat,” he laughed, took a pause and added, “My father never told me become an actor. That subject never came up and I am grateful to that. He waited for me to open up and decide what I wanted to do.” Before we could ask when was it that he realised that acting was his calling, he said, “I guess I decided that I wanted to be an actor during the last years of my college.”
But seeing his father working hard in his lines and performances helped shape his sensibilities towards the art, the industry and work. It gave him some sort of a direction early on in life. “It did influence me because I could not overlook the hard work my father put in every film. Somewhere, the way he rooted us, guided us and told us not to take advantage of any position. It took him a lot of hard work to reach where he is today,” he said and recounted the age old phrase ‘hard work has no substitute.’ He told us that his father’s stardom might have helped him take his first steps in the industry and given his first film a boost but everything else after that has been his own share of struggle.
like many South Indian actors, Teja, too, has had a taste of Bollywood with Zanjeer, opposite Priyanka Chopra. He feels that the only difference between the two industries is the production works. “It is very fast in Bollywood,” he pointed out.
Moreover, he does not like to differentiate between industries based on place. “It is about time we should stop looking at industries separately like Tollywood and Bollywood. Instead we should look at it like the American film industry. Soon I think there will be a lot of collaborations happening. like Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar are doing a movie together and that is amazing. It is going to open up windows to so many new actors. The movie will pull the south crowd for Rajinikanth and Akshay will pull the north crowd,” he said.
His acting and stardom apart, Teja is an entrepreneur. Not only does he own a polo club called Ram Charan Hyderabad Polo Riding Club but also started his own Hyderabad-based airline TruJet. We asked him how he manages to split his time amongst all these and he smiled, “You know, I ask myself this question everyday in the morning. luckily i have great partners so they take half of my headache and make sure I am peaceful at shoot, and they are doing well. I do not see myself as an entrepreneur yet, I see everything as an investment and my partners are the real entrepreneurs who are taking care of that business.”
Currently, he is working on a movie titled Dhruva in South, expected to release around Dussehra and after that has two more films in the south. He will also be producing a film for his father, which will be Chiranjeevi’s 150th film and also his comeback after nine years in politics. “By the end of the year I will do a Hindi film,” he wrapped up, ever so politely declining to disclose the title of the movie.