Early Life & Family:

Prabhas was born as Venkata Satyanarayana Prabhas Raju Uppalapati to late U. Suryanarayana Raju Pragathi and Siva Kumari in Chennai in 1979. He is the youngest of the three children with brother Pramod Uppalapati and sister Pragathi elder to him. Prabhas did his schooling from DNR School, Bhimavaram and intermediate from Sri Chaitanya College, Hyderabad before going on to complete his B.Tech.

Background:

Being the son of film producer U. Suryanarayana Raju Pragathi and nephew of yesteryear Rebel star Krishnam Raju Uppalapati who founded Gopikrishna Movies, films were the obvious choice for young Prabhas. After completing his college he made his onscreen debut in director Jayanth C. Paranjee’s ‘Eshwar’ in 2002 where he was romantically paired opposite Sridevi Vijaykumar. ‘Eshwar’ didn’t live up to the audiences expectations but Prabhas’ performance was noticed. He followed this up with director Suresh Krishna’s action-drama ‘Raghavendra’ in 2003 but as luck would have it the flick too turned out to be disappointment at the box-office.

Breakthrough:

Finally, Prabhas’ fortunes changed when ‘Varsham’ released in 2004 which was directed by Sobhan. ‘Varsham’ opposite Trisha was a runaway hit as it got him his first certified box-office hit. ‘Varsham’ was later remade in other languages including Hindi as ‘Baaghi’ in 2016 starring Tiger Shroff and Shraddha Kapoor.

‘Adavi Ramudu’ and ‘Chakram’ which followed after ‘Varsham’ were average fairs that could’ve cemented his place in the Telugu film industry. In 2005 came his first collaboration with director S.S. Rajamouli, ‘Chatrapathi’ where he starred with Shreya Saran which became a big hit. The success of ‘Chatrapathi’ was followed by a series of average films like ‘Pournami’, ‘Yogi Munna’, ‘Bujjigadi’ and ‘Billa’. He made a comeback with director A. Karunakaran’s ‘Darling’ in 2010 which featured Kajal Aggarwal as his love interest. Thereafter hits like ‘Mr. Perfect’ (2011), ‘Rebel’ (2012) and ‘Mirchi’ (2013) with Anushka Shetty got him into the big league of actors where he could claim that he had finally arrived to stay.

The year 2014 saw the announcement of director S.S. Rajamouli’s most ambitious epic costume drama ‘Baahubali’, a two-part drama for which Prabhas was signed up to play the titular role of Mahendra and Amarendra Baahubali. The release of the first part broke all box-office records becoming the third highest grossing film worldwide in India. It also garnered critical and commercial praise overseas as the sequel of it is set to become the most awaited big film of 2017 which released in a record number of 6500 theatres in Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil languages.

Filmy journey:

In career span of 15 years, Prabhas has done 20-odd films with a decent success rate to his credit. He has not only been paired with almost all the top leading actresses of Telugu cinema but has also worked with some of the top directors of his time like S.S. Rajamouli, Raghava Lawrence and Koratala Siva, etc.

Post the release of ‘Baahubali: The Conclusion’, Prabhas will be seen in director Sujeeth’s ‘Saaho’ which is being simultaneously made in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages. Made on a budget of Rs 150 crore, the music score of ‘Saaho’ will be done by popular Bollywood musical trio, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. The first teaser of 'Saaho' is expected to be unveiled on April 28th along with the screening of 'Baahubali - The Conclusion.'

With more and more producers and directors wanting to sign up the ‘Rebel star’, it seems like Prabhas is set for a big innings with no looking back this time.

Awards:

Prabhas has managed to bag a few awards too in his career of which the popular ones have been winning the CineMaa jury award for the Best Actor for his performance in ‘Darling’ and the Nandi Award for the Best Actor in ‘Mirchi’. Besides doing Telugu films he has also put in a guest appearance in the Punjabi Mast song in the Ajay Devgn action drama ‘Action Jackson’ directed by Prabhu Deva.

Trivia:

He was born in Chennai but brought up in Hyderabad.

He is the nephew of yesteryear actor Uppalapati Krishnam Raju.

He is the son of late producer U. Suryanarayana Raju Pragathi who founded ‘Gopikrishna Movies’ along with his brother Krishnam Raju.

Initially he aspired to be a businessman but on the instance of his uncle he became an actor.

He made his onscreen debut in director Jayanth C. Paranjee’s ‘Eshwar’ in 2002.

He got his first big hit in ‘Varsham’ in 2004 which was directed by Sobhan.

His ‘Varsham’ was remade in other regional languages including Hindi as ‘Baaghi’ in 2016 starring Tiger Shroff and Shraddha Kapoor.

He made his Bollywood appearance in a cameo in Ajay Devgn’s ‘Action Jackson’.

He was linked with actresses Anushka Shetty and Ileana D’Cruz.

He has also given voice over for the film ‘Denikaina Ready’.

He gave 5 years to prepare and play the role of his life in ‘Baahubali’.

The ‘Baahubali’ series is his biggest hit so far in his career.

He is known to be a fitness freak.

He is an occasional drinker and smoker.