Om Prakash Rao

Timeline

1. 1960sBorn in Bengaluru to the actor N. S. Rao and Yashodhamma, and grows up inside a film family.No outlet has published his date of birth.
2. 1991Appears in front of the camera in S. P. Bhargavi, the first of a run of acting credits that continues alongside his directing work.^[1]
3. 1994Directs three films in one year: Palegaara, Lockup Death and Gold Medal.^[1]Some profiles date Lockup Death to 1996; his Wikipedia filmography lists it under 1994.
4. 1997Simhada Mari becomes one of the defining commercial hits of his early career.^[1]
5. 1999A. K. 47, a Kannada and Telugu bilingual, extends his run of hits into the end of the decade.^[1]
6. 2001Huchcha, his remake of the Tamil film Sethu, earns him a Filmfare nomination for best director in Kannada.^[1]
7. 2004Kalasipalya and Sahukara both release, the second a remake of Rajinikanth's Muthu.^[1]
8. 2014Is named in an India Today sting on casting practices in the Kannada film industry, and is beaten up in Srirangapattana weeks later.^[5]^[6]
9. 2016Enters Bigg Boss Kannada 4 on Day 8 as the season's first wildcard and stays 48 days.^[4]
10. 2026Joins Bigg Boss Kannada 13 as an original housemate on 6 September and walks out on Day 8 after being hospitalised.^[3]^[7]

Who Om Prakash Rao is

Om Prakash Rao is a Kannada film director who has worked continuously since the early 1990s and has about 47 directing credits to his name. He is the son of the actor N. S. Rao, grew up in Bengaluru and built his career in the commercial end of the Kannada industry, making action films, family dramas and remakes of hits from other languages.^[1][2]

His name is attached to a run of films that did well at the box office in the middle of that decade: Lockup Death, Simhada Mari, A. K. 47, Huchcha and Kalasipalya. He has also acted in a long list of films, usually in supporting parts, and has appeared as a comedian, which is how the Bigg Boss introduction graphics described him in 2026.^[1][2]

Two things about him are unusual for a director of his generation. The first is how much television he has done: he is one of the few Kannada filmmakers of his age to have entered the Bigg Boss house twice, once in 2016 and again in 2026. The second is that his public record includes a well documented scandal from 2014, which is part of how he is known and is set out below.^[4][5]

N. S. Rao's son and a Bengaluru childhood

Om Prakash Rao was born in Bengaluru to N. S. Rao and Yashodhamma, and he grew up in a household where film work was the family trade rather than an ambition. N. S. Rao was a working actor, and a son in that house learns early how a production runs, who decides what and how long a career can be.^[1]

He has never set out his schooling in an interview that this entry could find, and no profile of him says which college he attended or whether he finished a degree. What the record does show is a man who went into the industry young and stayed, first in small jobs and then as a director, which is the standard route for the sons of working actors in the Kannada industry of that period.^[1]

He is also the father of the actress Shravya Rao, whose mother is the actress Rekha Das, his first wife. That makes three generations of the same family in front of the camera, a pattern that repeats across the Kannada industry and explains why his name is familiar to people who have never watched one of his films.^[1]

The 1990s: Lockup Death, Simhada Mari and a run of hits

His first year as a director was 1994, when three films carrying his name were released: Palegaara, Lockup Death and Gold Medal. Lockup Death is the one that is remembered. It is a police story built around custody and violence, and it became one of the films that defined the look of Kannada commercial cinema in the middle of the decade.^[1]

The filmography on his Wikipedia page lists Lockup Death under 1994, while other profiles and the summary paragraph on the same page give 1996. The difference is small but it is the sort of thing that shows how loosely film credits from that period are recorded, and it is one of the reasons dates in this entry are given with the source they come from.^[1]

Simhada Mari followed in 1997 and A. K. 47 in 1999. The second was a Kannada and Telugu bilingual, which was a normal way for a successful Kannada director of that era to reach a wider market, and it put his name in front of audiences outside Karnataka. By the end of the decade he was one of the directors a producer called when a star needed a commercial film quickly.^[1][2]

Huchcha, Kalasipalya and the remake years

Huchcha in 2001 is the film that critics still name first. It is a remake of the Tamil film Sethu, the story of a young man whose life is destroyed by a single act of violence, and it earned him a nomination for the Filmfare award for best director in Kannada. Remakes were the commercial logic of the industry at the time, and he became one of the directors who could take a hit from another language and make it work in Kannada.^[1]

That pattern continued for more than a decade. Annavru in 2003 was a remake of Thalapathi, Sahukara in 2004 a remake of Muthu, Yodha in 2009 a remake of Bose, Katte in 2015 a remake of Kedi Billa Killadi Ranga, and Huccha 2 in 2018 a remake of Raam. Kalasipalya, released in 2004, was an original and became one of his biggest successes.^[1]

The list is long enough that it defines him as a working director rather than an auteur: a man who could be handed a script, a star and a date and deliver a film. In an industry that releases more than a hundred titles a year, that reliability is a career in itself, and it is why he was still being offered work three decades after his first release.^[1]

A director who acts

Rao has appeared in front of the camera since 1991, when he was in S. P. Bhargavi. The acting credits run through Kaliyuga Seethe in 1992, Kempaiah IPS in 1993, Dakota Express in 2002 and Kanakambari in 2004, and he has kept taking parts in other people's films while directing his own.^[1]

The parts are usually small and often comic, and that is how he has been introduced on television. When Bigg Boss Kannada 13 announced its cast, the descriptions listed him as a film director, actor and comedian, in that order, and the show leaned on the comedian label in its promos.^[2][4]

Acting alongside directing matters for how he reads on a reality show. A director knows where the cameras are and what an edit will do with a scene, and a comedian knows how to wait for a laugh. Both are useful in a house where the only material is the behaviour of the people in it.^[2]

Four marriages and a family in the industry

Rao has been married four times, and all of it is on the record. His first wife was the actress Rekha Das, and their daughter is the actress Shravya Rao. He then married a woman called Nanda, and they had a daughter named Kushboo. In 2001 he married the actress Bhavya Premayya, and he is now married to Denissa, the marriage that his Wikipedia infobox dates to 2012.^[1]

The Wikipedia infobox says he has four children including Shravya. The family has stayed in the industry: his father was an actor, his first wife was an actress, one of his wives was an actress, and his daughter works in front of the camera.^[1]

He does not discuss his marriages in interviews, and coverage of him tends to skip from the filmography to the scandals. What is available is the bare record of the marriages and the names of the children, and beyond that the family has not spoken publicly in any detail.^[1]

The 2014 sting and the years after

In August 2014, India Today broadcast a sting in which Rao, the director Guru Deshpande and the producers Diwakar Babu and Rajashekar were filmed talking to young women about roles in return for sexual favours. The report was published on 28 August 2014 and named all four. Rao has not given an account of the episode that this entry could find.^[5]

On 27 August 2014 the Times of India reported that Rao had been beaten up in Srirangapattana, and his Wikipedia article says the shooting of the film he was working on was stopped by the crowd that confronted him. The two reports sit days apart and describe the same week: a television sting, then a physical attack.^[5][6]

The episode is on the public record and it follows him. It is the first thing a search for his name returns after the film pages, and it is the reason some of the coverage of his Bigg Boss entries in 2016 and 2026 carried a line about his past. Any account of him that leaves it out is incomplete, which is why it is here.^[5][6]

He kept working. The years after the sting include Election in 2013, Chandralekha in 2014, Katte in 2015 and Huccha 2 in 2018, and three films listed as unreleased: Thrishulam, Phoenix and Guerrilla War, the last two of which he was also producing.^[1]

Bigg Boss Kannada 4: the first wildcard

Rao entered Bigg Boss Kannada 4 in the 2016 to 2017 season as its first wildcard contestant, going in on Day 8. The season was hosted by Kichcha Sudeepa and ran into January 2017, and he stayed 48 days before walking out in week 7 while he was nominated for eviction. He finished fourteenth.^[4][8]

HousePulse, which keeps a season by season record for Bigg Boss Kannada, notes that his entry shaped the alliances in the house in the first weeks. A director in a house full of younger actors is a different kind of presence: he had nothing to sell, no film to promote and no obvious group to join, which made him useful to everyone and trusted by nobody.^[4]

He walked the first time too. The record for that season shows three nominations, in weeks three, five and seven, and a departure by choice rather than by public vote. The pattern of entering late, staying a while and leaving on his own terms is the same one that repeated in 2026.^[4]

Bigg Boss Kannada 13: eight days and an exit

The thirteenth season of Bigg Boss Kannada premiered on 6 September 2026 with 21 housemates, Sudeepa hosting for the thirteenth year and the show running on Colors Kannada and JioHotstar. The season opened with a flight theme, with the contestants living in a mock aircraft cabin before moving into the main house, and Rao was one of the 16 original entrants.^[7]

Within the first week he was taken to Aaradhya Hospital in Bidadi after complaining of physical discomfort. Reports said he had been sleeping badly in the flight area and was suffering from leg pain, and that the production team moved him for tests. He was saved from nomination on the Super Sunday episode with Sudeepa and then entered the main house.^[3]

He left on Day 8, which the season's record lists as a walk rather than an eviction, and finished twentieth of the 21 housemates. In an interview published on 17 September 2026 he said the food in the house had caused the problem: his sugar levels rose, his blood pressure went up and his leg, which had been a problem before, became serious.^[2][7]

He also said he had told the team about his diabetes before entering and had handed over his medical reports, and that doctors had warned him he could have had a stroke if he had stayed a few more days. He praised the team for taking him to hospital and said his only complaint was the food.^[2]

The exit is a small but clear illustration of how the show works for older contestants. A house built around tasks, late nights and food cooked for 21 people is physically demanding, and a man in his sixties with diabetes is at the wrong end of that demand. He wanted to stay, by his own account, and left on medical advice.^[2][3]

What has not been confirmed

His date of birth is not published anywhere this entry could find. Profiles give an age range rather than a date, and the Wikipedia article has no birth date at all, so anything precise about how old he is should be treated as an estimate.^[1]

His schooling and his early working life are undocumented. No interview sets out where he studied or what he did between leaving school and his first film, and the accounts that exist begin with his first release in 1994.^[1]

The year of Lockup Death is given as 1994 in his Wikipedia filmography and as 1996 in the summary of the same article, and this entry cannot settle which is right. The same problem applies to a few of the other early credits.^[1]

His fee for Bigg Boss Kannada 13 has not been disclosed, and the figures that circulate are estimates. There is no public record of what he was paid in 2016 either, and this entry does not repeat the numbers that appear on aggregator sites.^[2]

The 2014 sting is documented by India Today and by the Times of India report of the attack on him, but Rao has not given his own account of it in any interview that this entry could find, and no court record has been reported. The section above therefore describes what was broadcast and what was reported, not what was proved.^[5][6]