Krishnudu (Bigg Boss Telugu 10) Biography: Age, Family & Photos

Known for

Film actor

Active since

2005 (Modati Cinema); a photographer and assistant director before it

Also known as

Alluri Krishnam Raju, his real name · Krishna Alluri on his own Instagram · Alluri Krishna in the Wikipedia infobox · Karthik and Bandodu, the two roles people call him by · కృష్ణుడు in Telugu

Age

51 (born 15 July 1975)

Hometown

Chintalapalli, near Rajolu in the East Godavari delta; he lives in Hyderabad

Currently on

Bigg Boss Telugu 10 (Star Maa · JioHotstar, from 6 September 2026)

Film

Vinayakudu, the 2008 film he carried as the lead

Instagram

@krishnudu

Facebook

@IamKrishnudu

Threads

@krishnudu

Vote for Krishnudu in the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 poll → Unofficial fan poll on our homepage; the vote that counts runs in the JioHotstar app.

Krishnudu is in the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 house as one of its ten celebrities, and he got there after being told he had no future in front of a camera. Two or three directors said his size ruled him out. He went to Bombay, learnt fashion photography, opened a studio on Banjara Hills and shot other people instead. Twenty-one years and seventy-odd films later he is the man who plays the hero’s friend, and on 6 September he walked in without one.

Who is Krishnudu?

He is a Telugu film actor, twenty-one years into a career that has run almost entirely in supporting parts. If you have watched a Telugu film since 2006 you have seen him: Mahesh Babu’s friend in Pokiri, the heavy senior in Happy Days, Venkatesh’s assistant in Gopala Gopala, the mall man in Game Changer.

Once, in 2008, he was the hero. Vinayakudu was built around him, a big fat love story with a fat man at the centre of it, and it worked. He has said the calls that followed came from people who had spent their lives being told they were the wrong shape.

His own Instagram bio is four lines and only one of them is about films. Professional photographer. Passionate actor. Active in politics serving the nation.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss age and date of birth

Krishnudu is 51 years old. He was born on 15 July 1975.

The date comes from him. The first line of his Instagram bio, and of his Threads bio, reads “Stepped on to Mother Earth on ‘15 th july’”, and the English Wikipedia infobox and the film-biography sites give the same day. Wikidata and the Telugu Wikipedia both carry 29 July instead, which is where the second date in circulation comes from. All four agree on 1975.

His birthday falls in July, so it will not come round inside the house. A season that starts on 6 September runs about 105 days and finishes in the third week of December.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss real name: Alluri Krishnam Raju

His real name is Alluri Krishnam Raju. The Telugu Wikipedia gives it in full, and so do the film-biography sites; the English Wikipedia shortens it to Alluri Krishna in its infobox, and his own Instagram account is titled Krishna Alluri. Krishnudu is the screen name, and it arrived with the job rather than before it.

He was asked in 2008 whether a name that plain was a handicap for a new hero. He said no. “For me Krishnudu sounds very cute. Mudduga anipisthondhi.”

The other people called Krishnudu

Almost nothing that comes back for the name is about him.

Krishnudu is one of the names of Krishna, which is why the Telugu Wikipedia sends the bare word to the deity and files the actor separately under Krishnudu (natudu). It is also a film title several times over, and a stock character name.

Krishnam Raju, the fuller version of his real name, is also the name of a much bigger actor, the late Rebel Star and Prabhas’s uncle, who has no connection to him. And his father’s name, Alluri Sitarama Raju, is also the name of the freedom fighter from the same district, which sends anyone searching the family somewhere else entirely.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss images and photos

Almost every photograph of him in circulation is one he posted himself. He is a trained photographer who ran a commercial studio for years.

Posted the day before the house opened, and the frame the bio-wiki card is built from.

Posted on 2 September, four days before he went in.

A studio portrait, shot in black and white.

Posted on 31 August, credited on his own post to the photographer who took it.

With Chiranjeevi. “I am a Chiranjeevi fan,” he said in a 2017 interview.

The oldest of the six.

Where is Krishnudu from? The Bigg Boss contestant’s native place

Chintalapalli, a village near Rajolu in the East Godavari delta. His father farms, and it is where he went back to when things went wrong.

He has told the story of his own birth two different ways. In 2008 he said he was born and brought up in Rajolu. In 2017 he opened with Vizianagaram, which he described as a home of poets and artists. Both are his, and the village he calls his own has not moved either time.

Whatever the birth certificate says, he did not grow up in one place. He was at school in Nidadavolu up to the fourth class, in Visakhapatnam up to the ninth, and sat his tenth in Kakinada. He has lived and worked in Hyderabad since 1997.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss contestant’s education and college

He has a diploma in automobile engineering, taken on a polytechnic course in Bengaluru after his tenth class. He never used it.

“I was a diehard fan of the tinsel world,” he said of that stretch. “Throwing the books in the air, I dreamt of becoming a star. Instantly, I arrived in Hyderabad.” He got there in 1997 and enrolled at Devadas Kanakala’s film institute in Kamalapur Colony, finishing the acting course in 1998. Rajiv Kanakala took the occasional class. His mother Lakshmi Devi Kanakala took most of them.

Krishnudu the photographer, and Puri Jagannadh’s advice

The offers were starting to come when a lorry hit his scooter. The fracture put him out for close to two years, he was immobile for most of it, and he gained a great deal of weight. He went home to Chintalapalli. The actress Hema also lives in Rajolu, and he has said her help mattered in that period.

When he came back, two or three directors told him plainly that he was no use for films at that size. Puri Jagannadh, a friend, gave him a different answer. You like photography, he said. Go to Bombay and learn it properly. He trained under the photographer Bharat Mirchandani, and then, through Ram Gopal Varma’s brother-in-law Subbaraju, joined the fashion photographer Subi Samuel as an assistant.

He returned to Hyderabad and opened his own studio, The Faces, on Banjara Hills Road No. 3. Puri Jagannadh did the opening. He ran it until 2004 and shot for films while he did, among them Gangotri and Appudappudu. Photography is still on the first line of his Instagram bio, above acting, and travel is the other hobby he names. He says he has been almost everywhere in India and that Rajasthan is his favourite.

How Krishnudu got into films

He got in as crew. He joined the cameraman and director Rasool Ellore as an assistant director on Bhageeratha, the Ravi Teja film released in 2005. Near the end of that shoot a friend asked him to play the lead in a Hindi short called Chhe Feet Neeche, as a mafia don. He was good enough in it, and in an advertisement that followed, that a producer offered him a part in Manodu. He played a character called Beerbal, which is a joke about beer and bulk, and he tells it as one.

Manodu was the first film he shot. Modati Cinema, taken later, came out first, in 2005, so the credits and the calendar disagree about which one is his debut.

Then Pokiri arrived. Puri Jagannadh cast him as Mahesh Babu’s friend in 2006, and the friend-of-the-hero role became the shape of the next two decades.

Happy Days was the one that changed the scale of it. Sekhar Kammula had a small part in mind. A friend of Krishnudu’s had taken his own album to Kammula looking for work, Kammula spotted Krishnudu in a group photograph inside it, and that was the whole of the audition. The friend did not get a job. Kammula liked what he saw on set, kept adding to the role, and the fat senior who cuts a junior’s hair is the part a generation of Telugu viewers still recognises him from.

Krishnudu movies list and TV shows

Seventy-odd films across twenty-one years, almost all of them supporting parts, and a handful where the whole thing rests on him. He said in 2017 that the count had passed a hundred; the credits that can be checked run to about seventy.

Krishnudu movies list, year by year

He has produced once as well: My Boyfriend’s Girlfriend, in 2020.

Krishnudu’s latest movie and upcoming films

His latest release is Bad Boy Karthik, the Naga Shaurya action comedy that came out on 17 April 2026. Its cinematographer is Rasool Ellore, the man he assisted on Bhageeratha twenty-one years earlier.

Before that came two 2025 releases: Game Changer, the Ram Charan film directed by S. Shankar, where he plays Mall Malleshwarao, and Shanmukha in March, where he is Subrahmanyam. Amaran in the City: Chapter 1 is listed as filming and has no release date.

Vinayakudu, and its Nandi Awards

Vinayakudu came out on 21 November 2008. Sai Kiran Adivi wrote and directed it, Sonia Deepti played opposite him, and the whole picture turns on a heavy man in love with a woman who thinks she is above him.

It won two Nandi Awards, the Andhra Pradesh state film prizes, that year: second best feature film, and best debut director for Sai Kiran Adivi.

What mattered to him was not the box office. “There are so many who suffer from an inferiority complex about being fat, or short, or dark, or disabled,” he said in 2017. “This is a film that does a great deal to remove that complex.” The phone calls afterwards were from those people. He followed it with Villagelo Vinayakudu in 2009, in the same part.

Krishnudu TV shows before Bigg Boss Telugu 10

Two. He was in the small ensemble cast of Yuva on MAA TV, now Star Maa, and he has said the serial helped his career a great deal. Later came Gangato Ram Babu on Zee Telugu.

The channel he is on now gave him his first regular television audience nearly twenty years ago.

Krishnudu in politics

He joined the YSR Congress Party on 6 August 2018, at Prathipadu in East Godavari, during Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s padayatra through the district. Jagan put the party shawl on him himself, and the party posted the photograph.

Eight years on, the fourth line of his Instagram bio still reads “Active in politics serving the nation”. He has not announced a move since, and no seat has ever been contested.

Krishnudu in Bigg Boss Telugu 10

He is in the house as one of the ten celebrity contestants of Bigg Boss Telugu 10, which premieres on Star Maa at 7 pm on Sunday 6 September 2026 and streams on JioHotstar. Nagarjuna Akkineni hosts. The theme is Dasavatharam, ten avatars for the tenth season, and six of the sixteen came in through Agnipariksha 2 rather than from the industry. All of them are on our page for the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 contestants list.

Why Krishnudu suits the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 house

On screen the part he is best at is being the one in the group everybody likes. The format runs sixteen strangers through one kitchen for fifteen weeks while the audience votes every week on who stays.

He has been on Telugu sets since 2003, first behind a camera and then in front of one. He has played Mahesh Babu’s friend, Venkatesh’s assistant, and shared a scene with Pawan Kalyan. He has also been turned down flat, told he was the wrong shape for the industry, and come back anyway.

His Instagram bio puts photographer above actor, and he has spent his working life behind the lens. In this house the cameras never stop and he controls none of them.

Krishnudu’s fellow Bigg Boss Telugu 10 contestants

Among the celebrities he is up against are Varshini Sounderajan, who anchors Jabardasth and said no to this show for years before saying yes, Sudheer Reddy, the podcast host who has asked the questions for six years and now has to answer them, Chaithra Rai, the Kodagu actress who learnt Telugu on a serial set, and Debjani Modak, who arrived in Hyderabad from Kolkata in 2021 with no Telugu at all. From Agnipariksha 2 come Singer Jhansi, a folk singer who still farms in Suryapet district, and Srishti Vyakaranam, a software engineer turned Femina Miss India AP.

Bigg Boss Telugu 10 voting and Krishnudu

Nominations start in the week after launch, and from then on the official vote is free in the JioHotstar app while that week’s window is open. Every week’s nominees, the counts as they move and the evictions as they land are on our Bigg Boss 10 voting page, and the unofficial fan poll there takes his name too.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss contestant’s family and wife

Krishnudu Bigg Boss wife: Lalitha Gayathri

He is married to Lalitha Gayathri. He named her himself twice, in an interview in January 2017 and on his own Instagram a year later, under a photograph of the two of them.

No wedding date has been published. The marriage was late, and deliberately so. He put it off through the whole of his struggle, and said in September 2008, still waiting for Vinayakudu to come out, that it would happen the following year. Asked whether it would be a love marriage or an arranged one, he blushed and would not say.

Krishnudu’s daughter, parents and brother

They have one daughter. She was in primary school when he last spoke about her in an interview, which makes her a teenager now, so she is not named here.

His father, Alluri Sitarama Raju, is a farmer, and his mother is Savitri Devi. Neither of them wanted this career for him. “Initially, they didn’t like my ambition to become an actor,” he said in 2008. “For several years, I pulled on with much difficulty.” His younger brother married while he was still holding out. What turned his parents round was Happy Days and the Yuva serial arriving in the same stretch, so that people around them started recognising the name.

The zamindar story

There is a version of his background in circulation that has him born into a Kshatriya Raju zamindari line, descended from a zamindar of Chinchinada, with thousands of acres lost to the land ceiling laws of the 1970s. He was asked about it directly on a Telugu podcast in November 2024. He has not put a title of his own on the record anywhere we can read.

What he has said about his own household, in two long interviews nine years apart, is plainer. His father farms. Chintalapalli is the village he calls his own, and it is where he went when the accident stopped him.

Interesting facts about Krishnudu

• He was a working photographer before he was an actor, and his studio, The Faces, was opened by Puri Jagannadh, who three films later cast him in Pokiri.
• Two or three directors told him his size ruled him out of films. His single biggest role is the one that was written for a big man.
• The first film he shot is not the first film he appeared in. Manodu was taken first; Modati Cinema reached cinemas first.
• He has said Kamal Haasan is his favourite actor, and that the career he wants is Paresh Rawal’s, built on parts rather than leads.
• Asked once what his strengths were, he said his friends.
• He is a seafood man. Fish, prawns and crab, and above all of them naatu kodi curry.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss Instagram and social media accounts

Three accounts, all of them his. The Instagram and Threads profiles are the same Meta identity, which is why they carry the same handle, the same verified tick, the same photograph and the same four-line bio down to the spacing. The Facebook page is tied to both by the family photograph on it, posted with the same words he used on Instagram. Counts are a snapshot taken on 6 September 2026.

• Instagram — @krishnudu: 18,328 followers and 3,004 posts, verified.
• Facebook — Krishnudu: 35,600 followers. His official page, and the biggest of the three.
• Threads — @krishnudu: 1,750 followers, verified.

He has no YouTube channel and no X account of his own. Other accounts carrying his name and his photographs are not his.

Krishnudu wikipedia

He has a Wikipedia article in English, at Krishnudu, and a second one in Telugu. The Telugu article is filed under Krishnudu (natudu), because the plain word belongs to the god, and it is the fuller of the two on his early life: it carries his parents’ names, the three towns he went to school in, and the film institute.

The wiki-style facts in one line: Krishnudu, real name Alluri Krishnam Raju, born 15 July 1975 and 51 years old, from Chintalapalli near Rajolu in the East Godavari delta and living in Hyderabad, a Telugu film actor since 2005 with about seventy credits, best known as the lead in Vinayakudu and the senior in Happy Days, married to Lalitha Gayathri, and a celebrity contestant on Bigg Boss Telugu 10.

Krishnudu Bigg Boss FAQ

How old is Krishnudu?

He is 51. He was born on 15 July 1975, and the day is the one he gives in his own Instagram bio.

Where is Krishnudu from?

Chintalapalli, a village near Rajolu in the East Godavari delta of Andhra Pradesh. He has lived and worked in Hyderabad since 1997.

What is Krishnudu known for?

Vinayakudu, the 2008 film he led, and the senior student in Happy Days. Beyond those he has spent twenty-one years in supporting parts, about seventy films including Pokiri, Ye Maaya Chesave, Gopala Gopala, Vettaiyan and Game Changer.

Is Krishnudu married?

Yes. He put marriage off for years while he was struggling for work, and married after Vinayakudu came out. No wedding date has been made public.

Who is Krishnudu’s wife?

Lalitha Gayathri. He has named her himself, in a 2017 interview and in a 2018 Instagram post. They have one daughter.

Which TV show is Krishnudu in?

Bigg Boss Telugu 10, on Star Maa and JioHotstar from 6 September 2026, as one of the ten celebrity contestants. Before it he was in Yuva on MAA TV and Gangato Ram Babu on Zee Telugu.

What is Krishnudu’s Instagram ID?

@krishnudu, verified, with 18,328 followers as of 6 September 2026. His Facebook page is Krishnudu and his Threads handle is the same as his Instagram one.

More Season 10 profiles

• Chaithra Rai — television actress
• Debjani Modak — television actress
• Mukesh Gowda — television and film actor
• Naresh Jabardasth — comedian and jabardasth team leader
• Sudheer Reddy — anchor and podcast interviewer
• Temper Vamsi — film actor
• Varshini Sounderajan — television anchor and actress