January 26, 2011 (Sampurn Wire): Akkineni Nageshwara Rao has been awarded yet another honour by the government of India. Recognizing his contribution to the growth of Telugu Film industry both by being an actor par excellence and producer, the government announced the Padma Vibhushan for him on January 25. The award adds to the already existing list of prestigious awards he has won both by the film industry and the government.

Rao, popularly known as ANR, has also been a lead in Tamil movies. It is commendable to see that the actor has been a integral part of the industry for about 70 years now and had come to it while just aged 17 years old, in 1941. But that is not all. The actor had started his career even much before that, while just a kid, through theatre, where he played female characters, as was the trend in pre-independent India.

From Devadasu to Maya Bazaar to Prem Nagar to the superhit Premabhishekam, his movies have been acclaimed as both critically and commercially successful. And Rao gave the Telugu cinema world what it needed the most the Annapurna studio to promote the cause of carving a independent graph for this regional language.

Sri Ramadasu is the last film, the veteran has done probably in 2006.

--Sampurn Wire