Rana Daggubati seems to have an exciting year ahead with the release of his long in the making Baahubali, his Hindi films Baby and Nia and some other ventures as producer as well. Telling us about his home banner he says, “We have producing Telugu films but this year we are getting into the Hindi film space. We have just partnered with Bejoy Nambiar for Cricket, which is a remake of a Tamil film, Chennai 28. It’s a gully cricket based film that is almost complete.”

But action as a genre is the closest to his heart, he says. “I grew up watching action films. My phone has a Bruce Lee picture on it. Since my childhood, I have had four heroes: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Lee and Amitabh Bachchan. I also like Ranbir Kapoor’s films. Among the actresses, Deepika Padukone is very good and I am a fan of Katrina Kaif. I find Alia Bhatt terrific too.”

While he has been busy with films, Rana has had his fair share of link-up rumours too. “I come to Mumbai and I get linked up with actresses. Then I go to Hyderbad and there are more talks and then some more in Bengaluru. I’m not dating everyone! In the beginning I never understood this so I would call up people and explain it’s not true. Then I realised nobody is taking me seriously. So I stopped doing that,” he says.

Speaking of his Baby co-star Akshay Kumar, he says, “Akshay is a senior star and there’s so much to learn from him. We have had a solid time doing deadly stunts in Abu Dhabi. I’ve seen how disciplined he is. He sleeps early, wakes up at 4 am, eats right. Everything is so proper. And he has been doing it for 25 years. I’d like to incorporate a little bit of his discipline in my life.”