The art of being a Star

T-town superstars have taken up a new challenge and are trying to expand their acting repertoire with performance-oriented roles, along with their usual star-centric roles. It is an interesting tug-of-war for T-town superstars as they are finding ways to keep their star image intact while showcasing their histrionic skills in performance-centric roles. Stars have began to explore roles that challenge their acting skills to find a place in the elusive star-actor club.

Nagarjuna, who received accolades for his performance in his last film Gaganam, has always tried to mix it up. He enjoys essaying performance-oriented roles. “But given a choice, I would like to be a star rather than an actor,” he confesses. His colleague, Venkatesh, feels that experimenting is risky. “Moving away from an established image is experimentation. With so much money at stake on star films, we are forced to repeat ourselves at times,” he points out.

Although every actor dreams of portraying different roles to show off their repertoire, they are forced to play safe once they attain superstardom. Allu Arjun says, “That is the challenge I am looking for — roles that test my acting skills. Commercial success is important too and I’d love to be remembered as both a star and actor,” he says. Naga Chaitanya hates repeating himself, so his next two films will be as different as chalk and cheese. “A soft romantic role will be followed by an action role, since I like to break the monotony,” he says.

Even Jr NTR played a simple lover boy in Brindavan and came up triumphant. “It was a calculated risk but for now, I would like to stick to the larger-than-life roles since I have enough time to experiment,” he opines.