Mahesh Babu was born 9 August 1975 in a Telugu family in Madras to actor Krishna and Indira, after Ramesh Babu, Padmavathi, and Manjula. He has a younger sister Priyadarshini. Their family is from Burripalem in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. Mahesh spent his childhood in the care of his maternal grandmother Durgamma and his elder brother Ramesh used to look after his academic performance. He studied at St. Bede's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, Chennai and actor Krishna used to take the children to shooting spots in Ooty during summer holidays.
He made his debut as a child artist in a cameo role in Needa (1979), directed by Dasari in which his elder brother Ramesh was a hero. Mahesh acted in eight other films as a child artist in films like Poratam (1983), Sankharavam (1987), Bazaar Rowdy (1988), Mugguru Kodukulu (1988) and Gudachari 117 (1989), Bala Chandrudu (1990), and Anna Thammudu (1990). He played a dual role as a child artist in the film Koduku Diddina Kapuram (1989). Since Mahesh’s acting dates were getting extended even after school summer vacation, his father asked him to focus on studies and earn a degree. Actor Krishna even rejected him for “Yamaleela”, when director SV Krishna Reddy approached him as he was still in +2.
After college, he met director L. Satyanand or a brief training in acting. Superstar Krishna, impressed with Krishnavamsi’s Gulabi, Sindhuram, asked him to launch Mahesh as hero to which Krishnavamsi politely refused saying he would direct his second film but cannot take the pressure of his launch. Then, famous producer Aswini Dutt launched him with director Raghavendra Rao in Rajakumarudu (1999) co-starring Priti Zinta. Though Mahesh didn’t get vigorously trained in acting, he learnt horse riding and fights for the movie, which was a decent hit, well appreciated by Superstar Krishna’s fans and gave him the title ‘Prince’. Raja Kumarudu collected a share of 10.51 Crores from Andhra Pradesh. It was dubbed in Hindi as Prince No. 1 and in Tamil as Kaadhal Vennila. Krishnavamsi, as promised, then narrated Murari’s script to Mahesh and when he wanted to discuss the same with hero Krishna, Krishna asked to take up the responsibility of choosing scripts himself and learn from the results of the movie’s outcome.
Since Murari needed some more time to launch its shoot, Mahesh did Yuvaraju with director YVS Chowdary and then Vamsi with director B. Gopal in his father’s production co-starring Namrata, whom he married later. Both Yuvaraju and Vamsi performed average at the boxoffice. Mahesh received a breakthrough hit with Krishnavamsi’s supernatural drama Murari (2001), Though his 2002 releases Takkari Donga and Bobby performed poorly at the box office, he believed in Gunasekhar's Okkadu co-starring Bhumika Chawla, and took special care till its post production. Though Mahesh and GunaShekhar approached Ramoji Rao of Usha Kiran movies to produce the film, it was producer M.S Raju who came forward to put the Charminar set for Okkadu (2003) and the film went on to become the highest grossing Telugu film of the year collecting 23 crores at the box office and Mahesh won his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Telugu for his performance in the film.
Okkadu was later remade in Tamil as Ghilli (2004), Kannada as Ajay (2006), Bengali as Jor (2008), Hindi as Tevar (2015), Odia as Mate Aanidela Lakhe Phaguna (2008), and in Sinhala as Kabaddi (2021).
