Actor Nagaraju of 'Lava Kusa' fame passes away at 71

The actor passed away on Monday at his residence in Gandhi Nagar in Hyderabad due to respiratory illness.
Actor Nagaraju speaking in a Telugu channel interview
Actor Nagaraju speaking in a Telugu channel interview
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Veteran actor A Nagaraju, who was known for his child artist role as Lava in the Telugu mythological movie Lava Kusa, is no more. The actor passed away on Monday at his residence in Gandhi Nagar in Hyderabad due to respiratory illness.

The actor was 71 and had worked in several other films in Tollywood in various supporting roles, including Lakshmi Pooja.

Both the characters of Lava and Kusa received critical acclaim when the movie was released in 1963. It was directed by C Pullaiah and CS Rao and was released in Telugu and Tamil. It was later dubbed in other languages too.

While the role of Lava was played by Nagaraju, the Kusa role was played by Subrahmanyam, who was a stage artist then. The shooting started in 1958 and went on for five years, till 1963.

In an interview to a Telugu channel, recalling his role as Lava, Nagaraju said, “When the movie released, everyone was complimenting us, saying that we have done wonderfully. But it was only later that I understood the importance of the roles. We were beautifully moulded to suit our roles, we were given training for the use of bow and arrows. Director C Pullaiah used to sit with us on the set and explain about the context of the scenes, and we had most of the dialogues at our fingertips.”

The then child artists became famous with these roles. The mythological movie is a part of the Uttarakanda portion in the Ramayana, which is centred around the life of twin brothers Lava and Kusa, the children of Rama and Sita. The movie has senior actor Nandamuri Taraka Ramarao, who is popularly known as NTR, and Anjali Devi in the lead roles as Rama and Sita respectively.

This was the first Telugu movie to be released as a full length colour movie, according to the reports.

 

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