Super Supporting Stars Part 1: Subbaraju

It doesn't take watching very many Telugu movies before you realize there is a group of supporting actors and actresses that seem to show up in nearly every movie. Sometimes they are cast as the rowdies, some times the friends or brothers. The more senior actors play fathers or cops or politicians or factionists. The ladies are mothers, sisters, or aunties. Unlike the Hero, Heroine or Comedian  who must keep within the constraints of the archetype,  these actors are able to move from villain to good guy, comedy to drama in their various roles. In this recurring post I will feature one of these stars and give them some of the limelight and attention they deserve.

 Subbaraju: Hero in Waiting.

Subbaraju should be a Hero because he is hot. There. I said it. And I know there are quite a few out there who agree with me. In fact we in the interwebs are  debating how long before he gets his chance to be a hero. He has been expanding his roles from villains and fighters to less negative charactors. Most recently he was seen holding his own against the Big B himself in Bbudahh Hoga Tere Baap! I was especially thrilled to see him in BHTB. It is awesome to see him expand beyond the Telugu film industry and I hope he gets more opportunies to do so.
    According to Wikipedia he has a degree in Math and is a computor whiz too. He got his break in films  when he was noticed while fixing a computor for a filmmkaer.  He started off as a fighter and eventualy expanded to speaking roles. I first noticed him in Pokiri and untill recently my favorite role of his was in Parugu staring Allu Arjun. He plays the younger brother to Prakash Raj who beats people and manhandles his niece in order  to find Prakash Raj's missing daughter who had eloped.

But eventually you realize he is not so bad just concerned about his neice and her reputation. (So you can forgive him for beating up Sunil!)

I really liked him in that role. Recently I saw Leader. Subbaraju had a large supporting role in that film that deservedly won him critical acclaim.  He played a corrupt politician who was confident of his promotion to Chief Minister, until the recently deceased former CM's son, played by Rana Daggabuti returns from America and ruins his plans.

Subbaraju does a fabulous job of going from barely controlled rage to the hurt feelings and disapointment of a child and back to schemeing rage again.

The looks of shock and then hatred that plays across his face as he is repeatedly outmanuevered are perfectly done.

After his performance in Leader I can only hope that more roles like this come his way. For those interested in following Subbaraju's career more closely he is on Twitter @actorssubbaraju.

There has been rumours recently that he will be playing the lead hero in some upcoming movie but nothing has materialized yet as far as I know. I hope we don't have too much longer to wait for his first hero role.