Tanikella Bharani is an Indian actor, director, screenwriter, poet, and playwright, best known for working in more than 700 hundred Indian films, mostly in Telugu. Born into an affluent poetic family of Hyderabad, Tanikella began his performing arts career acting in and writing stage productions in the 1970s. He eventually moved to Chennai and began working in films. He made his film debut as an actor and a writer in 1985, with films such as ‘Kanchu Kavacham’ and ‘Ladies Tailor’. He further wrote for cult classic films such as ‘ Shiva’ and formed an actor-director association with director Ram Gopal Varma, appearing in many of his films throughout the 1990s. In the early 2000s, his film acting career flourished and he consistently played character roles or supporting roles in multiple films a year, sometimes even doing 15 films in a single year. Overtime he established himself as a bankable star. He has worked in more than 750 films until now, mainly in Telugu, and occasionally in Bengali, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. He has won 3 Nandi Awards for his roles in films such as ‘Samudhram’ and ‘Nuvvu Nenu’, and for his dialogues in the film ‘Mithunam’.