After a challenging last few years due to the underwhelming response to Agent, Akhil Akkineni went back to the drawing board and took a three-year break from screens. But it paid off as he recently returned with Lenin, which has emerged as his highest grossing film of his career. “I want to thank the Telugu audiences, every single one who came out and gave Lenin a chance without holding Lenin responsible for my past failures. They didn’t hold Lenin responsible for my baggage, which I respect a lot,” he says.
While things were professionally challenging, Akhil Akkineni didn’t let it bog him down. “There have been so many people who kept a lot of faith and belief in me and I am the most relieved relieved for them. This is the biggest victory for them and for me. There is a comeback and some redemption for all the hard work, but I feel like this is just the beginning,” he insists.
However, there were many physical and emotional challenges, too, that he had to go through in between, which included getting in a life-altering accident. Veteran actor Nagarjuna, Akhil’s father, had recently opened up about how a hand accident about one-and-a-half years ago, changed his son’s future forever. Opening up on the accident for the first time, Akhil tells us, ” It was a freak accident that happened in 3 seconds and it changed the fate of my life for 6 months. It taught me that no matter how fearless I am, anything can actually happen anytime.”
Akhil was on a holiday with his then fiance when he slipped on a shard of glass in the bathroom. “The next six months there was the doubt whether my hand would work, would it come back a 100% or not, and it still hasn’t come back a 100%, to be honest. It’s completely functional now, but the strength of it is nothing compared to my right hand. So it is what it is, but it scared the living hell out of everyone,” he shares.
The actor adds, “All of these thoughts created a lot of panic in my mind, but to get out of the panic, you have to keep yourself calm, prioritise and channelise your energies, look for what you want, and to where you want to be. The 16 months journey since, my priority was to just get my fingers back on track and make sure that the physiotherapy goes well. So I just made it a very military school-like discipline every day, just working on my hand. And soon enough, six months later, it got better and in eight months, I started to feel the strength come back. Then I just kept building and I was ready for anything in 16 months.”
He credits his wife, artist Zainab Ravdjee, for being his rock through the recovery. “It was a journey and I couldn’t have done it without her. She was there when it happened and then every day throughout the recovery. She was resilient and didn’t break. She didn’t panic herself, she just supported me and it helps a lot to have that sort of support,” he ends.