100 Years of Indian Cinema witnessed many legendary personalities made their mark at 24 crafts of the cinema. However, Padma Vibhushan, Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, Natasamrat, Dr.Akkneni Nageswara Rao has occupied most prominent place among those legends due to many reasons and they are as follows.
* ANR is the only hero of Indian cinema, who started his career in the first generation of talky movies, and has been continued his profession till his last breath in the present generation. ANR's first movie 'Dharmapatni' was released in 1941 and his last movie 'Manam' will be releasing in 2014.
* ANR was responsible for Telugu film industry to shift from Madras to Hyderabad. His 'Annapurna Studios' is one of the leading film studios of tollywood.
* He enjoyed the status of number one apart from NTR. Both NTR and ANR were considered to be two eyes of tollywood. ANR acted in 256 films and most of the films were proved to be industry hits, blockbusters, super hits and hits. He was one of the few heroes of tollywood to have good success percentage.
* ANR's son Venkat settled as a producer while ANR's second son Nagarjuna took the legacy of his father as one of the superstars of tollywood. ANR's grandsons Sumanth,Sushanth, Naga Chaitanya have also settled as heroes while another grandson Akhil is making his debut to tollywood soon.
* ANR had no school education. Even then, he had become one of the good orators of both in Telugu as well as in English. His speeches appear as if he were the personality development trainer. In fact, everybody can learn a lot from the life of ANR, as the latter has grown to this stage with his hard work, dedication towards his profession and strong determination to achieve his goals.