Ram Pothineni

Debut and early career (2006–2010)

Pothineni first appeared with his theatrical debut in 2006 with Devadasu.^[5][6] His second film, Jagadam opposite Isha Sahani was directed by Sukumar. He then appeared in Ready alongside Genelia D'Souza directed by Srinu Vaitla which was a commercial success.^[7] In 2009, he had two releases, Maska and Ganesh.

In 2010, Pothineni had only one release, Rama Rama Krishna Krishna, produced by Dil Raju and directed by Sriwass.

Career ups and downs (2011–2016)

Pothineni's next film was Kandireega (2011).^[8] Later he starred in Endukante... Premanta! (2012) alongside Tamannaah, directed by Karunakaran and produced by Sravanthi Ravi Kishore. In 2013, Pothineni appeared in Ongole Githa with Kriti Kharbanda directed by Bhaskar and produced by B.V.S.N. Prasad. In the same year, he co-starred alongside Venkatesh in the action comedy Masala, the remake of the Hindi film Bol Bachchan, directed by K. Vijaya Bhaskar and jointly produced by Sravanthi Ravi Kishore and D. Suresh Babu.^[9]

In 2015, Pothineni starred in two films, Pandaga Chesko and Shivam . While Pandaga Chesko directed by Gopichand Malineni, was a commercial success,^[10] Shivam ended up as one of the biggest failures of his career.^[11]

In 2016, He had two releases, both produced by his own production house Sri Sravanthi Movies, Nenu Sailaja which was a commercial success^[12] and Santosh Srinivas-directed Hyper which was an average at the box office.^[13]

2017–present: Career fluctuations and decline

His 2017 coming-of-age film Vunnadhi Okate Zindagi received mixed reviews. In 2018, he starred in the romantic comedy Hello Guru Prema Kosame directed by Trinadha Rao Nakkina. In 2019, he collaborated with director Puri Jagannadh for the action thriller iSmart Shankar. The film became a commercial success for Pothineni after a series of failures.^[14] It grossed over ₹90 crore, his career's highest grosser.^[15] His 2021 film was Red where he played a dual role, is a remake of Tamil film Thadam (2018).^[14] In 2022, he starred in the Lingusamy-directed The Warriorr where he played a police officer.^[16] The film received negative reviews from critics and was huge commercial failure.^[17]

He then starred in Skanda (2023) directed by Boyapati Sreenu.^[18] It opened to mixed-to-negative reviews from both the critics and audience, alike. It became the most-trolled Telugu film of its time and was prone to generation of multiple memes for its action sequences and dialogues. He next starred in the sequel to iSmart Shankar, Double iSmart, which released in 2024 to negative reviews. Unlike the prequel, it was highly thrashed by both the critics and audience, alike. It became his third consecutive box-office disaster.

He attempted to delineate himself from the commercial trappings of Telugu cinema, and starred in the romantic drama, Andhra King Taluka (2025), directed by Mahesh Babu Pachigolla of Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty (2023) fame. It opened to mixed reviews from the critics and audience, alike. Though his attempt to differentiate himself was lauded, the film ultimately ended up as an average grosser.

In May 2026, his newly formed production house by his brother, Krishna, and himself, RAPO Cinematics, announced his directorial RAPO23, a sci-fi psychological thriller. It was written and is being directed by himself.

As actor

• All films are in Telugu, unless otherwise noted.