Once India's highest paid actor, this South star earned more than Amitabh, SRK; it's not Rajinikanth, Mohanlal, Kamal

In the late-80s and early-90s, the Indian film industry had a few people who could be called superstars. The biggest name was, of course, Amitabh Bachchan, the reigning king. But down south, there were names like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Mohanlal, and Mammootty. Pretty soon, Big B gave way to the Khans, particularly Shah Rukh, who stepped into his shoes. But there was another name, who was not only matching them in terms of popularity but outdoing them in terms of box office draw.

The man who was ‘bigger than Bachchan’

In 1992, The Week magazine’s conver was graced by Telugu star Chiranjeevi. The headline screamed ‘Bigger than Bachchan’. The context was that Chiranjeevi had just become the first Indian actor to charge Rs 1 crore for a single film. His salary for an upcoming film at that time was Rs 1.25 crore. This is when Amitabh Bachchan was charging Rs 75-80 lakh per film and Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan even less. Chiranjeevi remained India’s highest-paid actor for a few years till Kamal Haasan charged Rs 1.5 crore for a film in the mid-90s, and eventually Shah Rukh Khan began charging over Rs 2-3 crore per film by the late-90s and 2000s.

Chiranjeevi’s superstardom

Chiranjeevi, born on August 22 1955, started his career in 1978 with Punadhirallu and Pranam Khareedu. While his early roles gained him recgnition from the audience, commercial success eluded him till the early 80s. His breakthrough success was Khaidi (1983), a commercial hit. He followed it up with a string of successes in the action genre. By 1991, with the successes of Kodamasimham and Gang Leader, he was dubbed the ‘boss of Telugu cinema’. The moniker ‘megastar’ would arrive later in his career as well. Chiranjeevi continued to be Telugu cinema’s leading star into his 40s and broke all box office records with his 2002 film Indra, the highest-grossing Telugu film of all time till then. In 2008, he took a hiatus from films after a slide in his career to focus on politics

Chiranjeevi’s comeback and becoming the megastar

In 2017, Chiranjeevi returned to acting in style with Khaidi No 150, which became a blockbuster. He followed it up with another hit in Sye Raa Narsimha Reddy. Since the pandemic, however, Chiranjeevi’s fortunes have been mixed. His first film with son Ram Charan – Acharya – was a box office failure, but GodFather was a moderate success. In 2023, he has starred in Waltair Veerayya, the year’s highest-grossing Telugu film, but also in the box office disaster Bhola Shankar. Despite this, even at the age of 68, Chiranjeevi remains one of the mostv sought after actors in Telugu cinema.