Akhil Akhineni

Early life

Akhil was born in California, United States of America. Akhil studied at Chaitanya Vidyalaya, later headed to Australia for two years and returned to complete his studies at Oakridge International School, Hyderabad. Akhil pursue to choose acting as a career at age 16 and enrolled in an acting course at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York, while his father thought of giving him business educations at that time.

Career

Akhil debuted in his father movie at age one, in Shiva Nageswara Rao's Sisindri(1995), an Indian adaptation of the American comedy film Baby's Day Out(1994). Later, Akhil re-emerged as a cricketer to Nag Kings team, for his father in the 2010 edition of the celebrity Tollywood Trophy, which developed funds for the Movie Artistes' Association. His match-winning half-century in the final against the Venky Warriors team, saw him secure the man-of-the-match and man-of-the-series awards. His performance in the matches saw him called up to play for the Telugu Warriors in the inaugural Celebrity Cricket League during 2011, and he has since regularly participated in the tournament and won the 2015 edition as captain of his team.

In 2014, Akhil appeared in Vikram Kumar's family drama film on faith and destiny Manam (2014), which featured three generations of actors from the Akkineni family, where Akkineni Nageswara Rao expressed the most thrilling is watching three generations of same family on screen, which features real grandson (Naga Chaitanya) as grandfather, real grandfather (Nageshwara rao) as grandson and Akkineni Nagarjuna as father, which rarely happened like in Paa (film). Where Akhil was introduced by his grandfather, marking this as Nageshwara Rao last movie. considering this as cameo appearance where Akhil helps everyone in climax, fortunately in the end while Nageshwara rao last scene becoming Akhil's first scene, is memorised as faith and destiny. Actor Nagarajuna and other Indian actors expressed this as tribute to Nageshwara Rao. Amitabh Bachchan made guest appearance in the movie, which is Bachchan's first Telugu movie. The makers initially kept Akhil's appearance as secret, but the news was leaked before the film's release. Director Vikram Kumar had proposed the idea of introducing Akhil as an actor through the film and had approached Akhil's father, Nagarjuna, with the idea, who subsequently agreed. Akhil shot for the film for a few days alongside his grandfather, father and half-brother, and described the experience as "nervous and exciting", and added that Vikram Kumar helped calm him down during the shoot. Manam went on to become one of the most profitable Telugu films of 2014, while critics dubbed the film as "classic" en route to it winning several awards including Best Film at the Filmfare Awards. Akhil subsequently went on to make appearances in commercials, notably featuring in adverts for Karbonn Phone, Mountain Dew and Titan watches with Kalki Koechlin.

Akhil listened to scripts from several directors and was most impressed by V. V. Vinayak's narration of an action film, which was later titled Akhil (2015) after himself. In order to prepare for the role, Akhil enrolled in a stunt workshop with his personal trainer Kicha and attended workshops in Thailand for two months. Produced by actor Nithin and Sudhakar Reddy, the film began production in December 2014 and featured him alongside fellow debutant actress Sayesha Saigal, who was also from a film family. The film was released to mixed reviews, despite huge expectations it became a huge disaster at box-office.