Apart from his native languages Tulu and Kannada, Raj's fluency in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, English, and Marathi has placed him among the most sought after actors in Indian cinema.

Actress Geetha introduced Prakash Raj to prominent Tamil film director K. Balachander.

They had two daughters, Meghana and Pooja, and a son, Sidhu who died in 2004 when he was five years old after sustaining injuries from a fall while kite flying.

His breakthrough role came in Harakeya Kuri, directed by K. S. L. Swamy starring Vishnuvardhan, with whom he had acted in other films such as Mithileya Seetheyaru, Muthina Haara and Nishkarsha.

His performance was noticed by Geetha, the lead heroine of the film, who introduced Prakash to her mentor K. Balachander, a Tamil director.

The movie dealt with the relationship between politicians M. G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi, for which he won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He also acted in Pandippada, with Dilip in 2005, Thekkekara Superfast in 2003, Keerthichakra in 2006, Amal Neerad's Anwar and Shyamaprasad's sensational movie Elecktra in 2010.

Prakash Raj also acted in a 2004-released multi starrer hit film Khakee along with Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar & Tushar Kapoor, playing Assistant Commissioner of Police Shrikant Naidu, Angre's main mole in the police force.

Since Wanted (2009), Prakash Raj has been a regular villain in Hindi language Bollywood movies, including Singham, Dabangg 2, Mumbai Mirror (2013), and Policegiri.

He acted with actor Kamal Haasan in Vasool Raja MBBS, which was a critical and commercial success.

[citation needed] Prakash took on the mantle of director with Naanu Nanna Kanasu, in Kannada in 2010, for which he was the joint producer.

In 2014, he directed the multilingual film Oggarane (in Kannada), Ulavacharu Biryani (in Telugu) and Un Samayal Arayil (in Tamil).

He produced a multilingual film Oggarane (Kannada), Ulavacharu Biryani (Telugu) and Un Samayal Arayil (Tamil) in 2014.

[38] Prakash Raj started his active political movement with the hashtag #justasking on social media after his friend Gauri Lankesh's assassination incident in September 2017.

He contested in the 2019 Indian general election as an independent candidate for the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency.

Problems started during the shooting of the Telugu films Pawan Kalyan's Jalsa, NTR Jr's Kantri, and Allu Arjun's Parugu.

"[48][49] Several Kannada organisations staged protests in front of theatres since they felt that some of the dialogue in a scene in the Hindi film Singham, starring Ajay Devgan and Prakash were derogatory against the Kannadigas.

The controversial scene starts off with Prakash threatening Ajay that he would bring 1,000 people from the Karnataka border to thrash him.

Ajay (who plays Bajirao Singham, a Maratha), retorts that one lion would suffice to shoo away a thousand dogs.

"[50][51][52] Finally the dialogue was removed, and the whole team of Singham including the director Rohit Shetty, the production house "Reliance Big Entertainment", and Prakash apologized to all the Kannadigas; the issue was resolved.