Ghattamaneni Mahesh Babu , born August 9, 1974 in Madras, India, fondly known as Prince by fans, is an actor in the Indian Telugu movie industry.He is the son of Telugu actor Krishna and Indira Devi, born in Madras, Tamil Nadu and did most of his schooling and undergraduate in Madras. He has one elder brother, Ramesh, two elder sisters, Padmavathi, Manjula and one younger sister Priyadarsini. He married Bollywood actress Namrata Shirodkar who is two year older than him. in February 2005. On August 31, 2006, Mahesh and Namrata's first son was born and named as Gautam Gattamaneni.Mahesh Babu started out his movie career as a child actor in his father's films before making his debut as an actor. His debut film as a lead actor was Rajakumarudu, cast opposite Preity Zinta. His next few films such as Yuvaraju and Vamsi also helped establish Mahesh's career. But in 2001, his release Murari became a breakthrough for Mahesh. Mahesh and Sonali Bendre played the main roles of the film. However in 2002, Mahesh had a dull phase. Both releases Takkari Donga and Bobby flopped at box office.In 2003, Mahesh finally got the hit he was looking for. Okkadu became one of the biggest hits in Tollywood for the year 2003. Mahesh gave another flop at box office with, Nijam, that same year. However, he won the Nandi Award for Best Actor for his performance in Nijam. In 2004, Mahesh acted in the flop, Naani, which was a remade from Tamil hit New. Arjun, which released in Summer 2004, came to be an average to above average grosser. For one year, Mahesh did not sign up for any film, as he was busy with Athadu from June 2004 to July 2005. It was a big hit both in India and overseas. In April 2006, his next movie, Pokiri became the highest grosser in the Telugu Film Industry. Mahesh's performance was applauded by even Ram Gopal Varma and Amitabh Bachchan. Mahesh's recent film, Sainikudu had a tremendous opening but failed to live up to expectations.But it managed a cool 100 day run. All his hits have been remade in Tamil and Hindi .