RIP Chalapathi Rao: Jr NTR, Chiranjeevi, Balakrishna, Pawan Kalyan offer their condolences

Telugu film industry is in the middle of a dark phase with several prolific names from the yesteryear era leaving for the heavens. Even before one could get over the demise of Krishnam Raju, Krishna in the recent months, another veteran actor Chalapathi Rao, died of cardiac arrest on Saturday at 78. Several notable names from the film industry conveyed their condolences on social media.

From actors like Jr NTR, Nandamuri Kalyanram, Nandamuri Balakrishna, Chiranjeevi, Pawan Kalyan, Allari Naresh, Roja, Jagapathi Babu to directors Sreenu Vaitla, Anil Ravipudi, Bobby Kolli, Surender Reddy and Ramesh Varma, many expressed their shock over Chalapathi Rao’s untimely death. Here’s what they had shared on their social media handles.

Jr NTR called him a close family member, who’d known his grandfather NTR very well and said that it would be tough to get over his loss on a personal level. Kalyanram mentioned that the news was a shocker to his family. Balakrishna stated that Chalapathi Rao was extremely close to the Nandamuri family and said the industry had lost a very good actor.

Pawan Kalyan addressed him as a versatile artiste while Chiranjeevi reminisced about the many movies he had acted with Chalapathi Rao. Despite acting in negative roles, he was a very positive soul, shared actress Roja, mourning his death. The veteran associated with every notable actor from the 60s till the 2020s, from Krishna, NTR, Sobhan Babu to Uday Kiran, Chiranjeevi, Srikanth, Nagarjuna and Balakrishna.

Chalapathi Rao was witty, often in the news for his ‘no-holds-barred’ comments/speeches on his industry counterparts and expressed his happiness on watching some of his illustrious films on television in his later years. His career in cinema took off with Goodachari 116 in 1966 and went on for over five decades till Nagarjuna’s Bangarraju in 2022 for over 1500 films.