Dwarakish was born on 19 August 1942. He grew up in Ittigegud, Mysore. He received his primary education in Sharada Vilas and Banumaiah's school, and he graduated from CPC Polytechnic with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. After completing his education, Dwarakish and his brother started an automotive spare-parts business called "Bharath Auto Spares" in Gandhi Square, Mysore. He was strongly attracted to acting and often asked his maternal uncle, a famous cinema director Hunusur Krishnamurthy, to give him a chance to act in movies. In 1963, he decided to quit business and start acting in movies.
Film career
In 1966, Dwarakish produced his first film Mamateya Bandhana. In 1969, he independently produced Mayor Muthanna, under the banner of "Dwaraka Films". Rajkumar and Bharathi played the lead roles in this movie. After Mayor Muthanna, Dwarakish gave a series of box office successes to Kannada cinema, one after the other for the next two decades.
Director
From the year 1985, Dwarakish started directing movies; his first movie as a director was Nee Bareda Kadambari. He went on to direct movies for other producers. Behind the camera, Dwarakish was successful. As a director, he created movies such as Dance Raja Dance, Nee Bareda Kadambari, Shruthi, Shruthi Haakidha Hejje, Rayaru Bandaru Mavana Manege and Kilaadigalu Dwarakish Chitra faced problems after the failure of some movies. With huge losses from box office failures, Dwarakish was written off by his own colleagues and the entire film industry. Despite failures, Dwarakish did not despair. He continued to make movies introducing new faces to Kannada cinema. As a producer, he has brought many new people to the cinema. Not only actors and actresses—he has given opportunities to new directors and other technicians. They all consider him to be their "Godfather". The support of these people, and his unwavering dedication to cinema, gave Dwarakish his long-awaited moment of success. Dwarakish produced Apthamitra in the year 2004. Apthamitra was a magnificent success.
Actor
As an actor, he was often typecast as a comedian. But some of his movies were comic action movies, also starring the actor Vishnuvardhan. He is popularly called "Kulla" in Kannada. He was the first producer to shoot a Kannada film outside India. The film was Singapoorinalli Raja Kulla. It was a milestone in the history of Kannada cinema. He has in total produced 50 Kannada films and acted in more than 300 films. He was the first Kannada producer to bring Kishore Kumar to the Kannada film Industry and the song Aadu Aata Aadu became extremely popular.
Records and awards
Apthamitra created records in Kannada Cinema. It was the first Kannada movie to celebrate screening for one year in two theatres, at Santosh in Bangalore and at Ranajith in Mysore and was the first Kannada movie to successfully complete one year of screening with four shows daily.
Produced First Kannada movie to be shot outside India.
