Ajay & Samantha Akkineni Movies Together List — 6 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 83% of everything they made together. The 2010s belonged to Janatha Garage; the 2020s to Pushpa (The Rise Part-01). Ajay acted in every film; Samantha Akkineni acted in all of them.

Partnership facts

• Ajay and Samantha first shared screen space in Dookudu (2011), but the pairing almost didn't happen. The director, Srinu Vaitla, initially wanted a different actress for the role, but Samantha auditioned and convinced him she could match Ajay's comic timing.
• In Janatha Garage (2016), Ajay played a stoic, brooding mechanic while Samantha was the bubbly love interest. She deliberately sped up her dialogue delivery in their scenes together, forcing Ajay to react faster and loosen up his trademark intensity — that push-and-pull made their banter feel real.
• Their pairing in Dookudu (2011) directly launched the trend of the 'mass hero with a modern, independent heroine' in Telugu cinema. Before this, heroines in blockbusters were mostly decorative. Samantha's character actually roasted Ajay's hero — and audiences loved it. Every major Telugu film after that tried to copy that dynamic.
• During the shoot of Autonagar Surya (2014), Ajay and Samantha were already dating in real life, but they kept it completely hidden from the crew. They'd rehearse scenes alone in his vanity van, and the director only found out years later when they got married.
• Samantha once said about working with Ajay: 'He doesn't give you anything on set. He just stares at you with those eyes, and you have to bring your A-game or you'll look like a fool.' She said this in a 2017 interview with Film Companion.
• In 24 (2016), Ajay played three roles — and Samantha played the love interest of only one version of him. She had to act differently with each 'version' of Ajay on set, adjusting her body language and eye contact depending on which character he was playing that day. She later said it was the hardest acting exercise of her career.