HYDERABAD: Sreenivas Bellamkonda made a splash with the high budget and glitzy Alludu Seenu . The film fetched him good reviews and as his second film Speedunnodu is set for release next week, he says he is not as nervous as he was for his debut movie. He recalls the factors that led him into movies, “I had to create my own space despite being a producer’s son. As soon as I finished my tenth standard, director V.V. Vinayak saw me and felt I had the pre-requisites to be an actor. Dad also wanted me to become an actor but felt I should complete my studies first. Vinayak wanted to launch me and I found that too tempting. I started training, I thought I should be good in all aspects and focused on my weight first and lost 25 to 30 kilos.”
The actor reveals that his father had given the first break to V.V. Vinayak, who in turn launched Sreenivas as a gesture of gratitude. He did an acting course with Barry John and Lee Strasberg institute and trained for martial arts in Vietnam for more than four years.
Ask him why he chose a mass movie instead of a simple love story or a family entertainer, he has an explanation. Even if the love story is a hit, the lead actor will have a limited market, whereas if you do a mass role first, later people will accept you in a love story too.
“It sounds ridiculous but that is a fact and that is how it works. Now that I have showed my skills in my first film I was looking to do a story that can show my acting skills. I want to do message-oriented films. This is a film on friendship that has a strong point but there are extra elements like dance, fights. It revolves around a group of five friends and is a remake of Sundarapandian , which worked big time in Tamil and Kannada. We took the soul of the film and changed it a lot.”
The actor says he first listen to scripts and then passes it on to his dad for his advice. “I am hardly seen in Hyderabad. Even in childhood I was not into socialising. I would not even go to my dad’s audio launch functions,” he says.
