Amrish Puri View Biography 238 Views

“Yeh kahaan phansa diya, yaar? Jahan jao, sirf ek request, ki main ‘Mogambo khush hua’ line deliver karu…” Amrish Puri had complained to Shekhar Kapur, who had directed him in Mr India. Mogambo went on to become one of India’s best-loved iconic film characters. Mogambo is Amrish Puri.

Brother of Chaman Puri and Madan Puri, Amrish had failed a screen test when he wanted to join his brothers as actors and ended up working for Employees State Insurance Corporation; but kept up with his theatre acting at Prithvi Theatre. He worked with Satyadev Dubey and Girish Karnad and in 1979 he won the Sangeet Natak Academy Award for his theatre performance.

It was actually his success as a theatre actor that paved the way to getting into TV serials and film. The man who had been rejected for a film career in the early stages of his life went on to seal his position as one of the greatest performers in Hindi cinema, and beyond. He acted in over 500 films cutting across a number of Indian languages and even English films. He played Mola Ram in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and  Khan in Richard Attenborough’s epic, Gandhi.

Known for his roles as the villain like Mogambo, Thakral in Meri Jung (for which he won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor) he has been often described as the Villain of Villains, with his baritone voice doing half the job.

He suffered from a rare blood cancer and had to undergo a brain surgery. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 72.