MUMBAI: 85-year-old veteran Telugu film actor Kantha Rao died on Sunday, 22 March, at around 11 pm in Hyderabad. Rao had been suffering from liver cancer for the last few years.

Rao, whose original name is Thadepalli Lakshmi Kantha Rao, was born on 16 November, 1923.

Rao has acted in more than 400 Telugu mythological, social and folklore movies. His last film was Balakrishna starrer Pandurangadu.

He acted in a few Hindi and Kannada movies too. In the 1960s, he was the third force in Telugu cinema, behind NT Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageshwara Rao.