Samantha Ruth Prabhu says she was ‘addicted to fame’ till Myositis saved her from her ego

The addiction, she admitted, began early. A girl from a small town who stumbled into the spotlight and could not quite believe what she found there. “It was shocking to me that a girl from nowhere, like from a small town, experienced stardom and people love me,” she said. “They were loving me on the big screen. They are looking forward to watching my films. They are screaming my name.” That shock, she explained, became the engine that drove every decision she made. “With this surprise, I worked in films. I was addicted to the game of stardom.”

With so much zest, the work started to piled up. As a result, the hits kept coming. And the scrutiny of her own choices disappeared entirely. “I’ve done a bunch of films I’m not proud of,” she said plainly. “There was a phase where I did a bunch of films I wasn’t proud of.” But the numbers looked good, and the numbers were all that seemed to matter at the time. “In a year, I remember that I made five movies back to back, and all of them were hits, so people thought I had a golden leg and I believed that I should live up to the expectations.” The deeper questions never came up. “Not at one point did I feel like, do I not have talent, can I improve, what am I contributing to this film. I had a blockbuster and I was settling for that back in the day. It never felt like I was getting back whatever I wanted to get back from cinema.”

This was not the first time life had tried to slow her down. In 2012, a health scare left her bedridden just 15 days into her career, a brief but jarring encounter with vulnerability right at the start. But youth has a way of absorbing hard lessons without retaining them. “Apparently I learnt nothing from my first break, because I got into the hustle of things back to back again, five films a year, six. So apparently I didn’t learn too much from that. Most change came from this break, not that.” she recalled.

The second break, however, was different. Samantha was diagnosed with myositis, a rare autoimmune condition, in 2022, forcing her to step away from work at a time when she was, by her own account, running harder than ever. “When I had to take that break recently, I was hustling the most,” she says. “I wanted to do many films and keep doing it. I never thought there would be retirement. You become so egoistic as an actor that you see no end, you refuse to see there is an end.”

What the illness gave her, unexpectedly, was a new, changed perspective. “After this recent break, I could envision that end for me, and that really changed me in many ways.” The break did not just change her thinking. It changed everything around her. “I made certain decisions during the break, like if I come back to this profession after the break, I will have to change a lot of things, a lot of old patterns,” she said.

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“The moment I came back to work, I made all those changes. In terms of brands, films, opening my own production company. The changes were 360 degree change. Now I am living my life with a purpose I’ve given it to myself.”

Maa Inti Bangaaram, directed by Nandini Reddy and starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu, is set to release worldwide on June 19. The film is produced by Samantha herself alongside Raj Nidimoru and Himank Reddy Duvvuru under their banner Tralala Moving Pictures, making it her first project as both lead actor and co-producer.