Amrish Puri made his debut when he was almost 40, in 1971’s Reshma Aur Shera. But by the 1980s the late bloomer was India’s favourite villain.
As Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and as the Fascist Mogambo in Mr India, Puri ensured that we would never forget the booming baddie with the menacing, beady eyes.
The 72-year-old actor died at Mumbai’s Hinduja Hospital on Wednesday, following brain haemorrhage. He is survived by wife Urmila, a son and a daughter Namrata.
“He was suffering from the inside, but wouldn’t tell us,”” said son Rajeev at the family bungalow in Juhu, where tinseltown thronged to condole the actor’s death.
Puri always said he enjoyed playing the bad guy. Yet he straddled genres adroitely. From Shyam Benegal’s Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika to Shekhar Kapur’s comic Mr India, Kamal Haasan’s hilarious Chachi 420 and Yash Chopra’s romantic melodrama Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, there was ample proof of his versatility.
In a career spanning more than 30 years, Puri worked in over 200 films, mostly playing negative characters.
“Wo ajeeb aadmi tha (He was a strange man),” remembers Javed Akhtar, who wrote the role of the unforgettable Mogambo in Mr India. “Mogambo had to be someone like him who had an authoritative voice.”
In an interview, Puri once said: “Children come up to me and say “Amrish uncle, Mogambo khush hua. I repeat it to please them.”
That line, from Mr India, was the most famous of his career.
He was born in 1932 at Navshera in Punjab to Prakashvati and Lala Nihal Chand.
He graduated from BM College in Shimla before he moved to Mumbai in the 1950s.
Much before Bollywood discovered him, Puri had made his name in theatre.
Elder brother Madan Puri was an established actor, but Puri’s journey was not an easy one. Benegal says he first knew Puri as a theatre actor.
“I remember shooting Sardari Begum in a village in Gujarat,” recalls Benegal.
“Smriti Mishra was nervous and would just not give the right shot. Amrish took her aside and moments later, she was fine.”
In a career spanning more than 30 years, Puri worked in over 200 films, mostly playing negative characters.
It was the stern, traditional Indian father of DDLJ that turned him into a character artiste. “I think DDLJ was a turning point in his career,” says DDLJ producer Yash Chopra.
“He was like a family member. It’s difficult to believe he is no more.”