Ram Pothineni is the only child of Murali Pothineni, brother of Sravanthi Ravi Kishore, a noted producer in Telugu. He is born in Hyderabad but was brought up in Chennai where he also completed his schooling. He went to Chettinad Vidyashram and St.Johns School in Chennai.

Ram is very interested in dancing right from his childhood. When he grew up, he took in crash courses of all kinds – acting, dancing, horse-riding, stage performance, book reading and others.  At the age of 12, He appeared in a short film by name ‘ID’ in Tamil and was awarded “THE BEST ACTOR” among 120 films screened from 60 countries at the European Film Festival conducted at Otten, Switzerland

His first film was supposed to be 'Kadhal' in Tamil (Premiste in Telugu) but rejected it at the last moment for YVS Chowdary's Devadas. It went on to become a blockbuster and ran for 175 days which is a monumental record for a movie of a debutant. His second film, Jagadam won him a lot of critical acclaim but failed miserably at the box office. Finally in 2008, Srinu Vaitla turned the table for him by delivering another blockbuster, Ready.

Ram, who is doing one film per year, appeared in two movies in 2009 – Maska (Hit) and Ganesh (Flop), and had mixed results in store for him. And in the consequent years, he had one release per year – Rama Rama Krishna Krishna in 2010 (Average), Kandireega in 2011(Super Hit), Endhukante Premanta in 2012 (Flop) and Ongole Gitta in 2013 (Flop). Kandireega is the biggest hit in Ram’s career so far.

Masala is Ram's first multi-starrer and also remake film. The movie also featured Victory Venkatesh and Shazahn Padamsee paired with Ram for the first time. The flick received decent reviews but did not do well at the box office.

• Pandaga Chesuko under the direction of Gopichand Malineni.