Nagarjuna who is considered to be the ever young man of Tollywood could hide his age with makeup and fitness in the film "Manmadhudu-2", but not from the minds of the audience. He understood that he should not venture to do young man's roles at this age.
Similarly, Venkatesh, who appears in Narappa is perfect as long as he played the middle aged man's role. But when he comes up as a young man in the flashback episode, he couldn't hide his age in spite of make-up and graphical corrections.
His pairing up with Abhirami proved to be an odd choice just because of the evident age gap. So it was a red signal for him on the road of doing young roles. He needs to stick on to the likes of "Drushyam".
Same is the case with Chiranjeevi who looked like an odd man beside Tamanna in the film "Sye Raa ''. It worked for him in "Khaidi-150" while pairing up with Kajal just because of the comeback hype. But the same may not work all the time. It is not the problem with the agility of the hero but the truth about the age that dwells in the minds of the people.
The senior heroes of the present generation cannot follow the footsteps of NTR and ANR who danced with heroines half of their age even when they were in their later 60s. Gone are those days to accept such a phenomenon.
In this OTT world, there are many opportunities to explore the performance side of all age group artistes. The big stars can bring out their best in the form of performance oriented portrayals now.