Om Puri made more than 300 films, won two National Awards, earned a BAFTA nomination and an honorary OBE. Promoting East Is East, he told the BBC he would never get the roles that went to Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Today would have been his 76th birthday.
With his rugged face and deep voice, he possessed a screen presence that required neither glamour nor grand gestures. He belonged to a rare breed of actors who could disappear completely into a character.
At a time when mainstream Indian cinema often celebrated larger-than-life heroes, Om Puri brought an authenticity and naturalism to his roles. From a struggling villager to a police officer, a comedic friend, a conflicted family man or a ruthless antagonist, he understood the silences, frustrations and vulnerabilities of ordinary people. He became the face of the common man.
He won two National Awards for Arohan (1982) and Ardh Satya (1983) and was recognised at a number of film festivals, including a lifetime achievement medal at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival.
Master of art cinema
Calling Puri a master of art cinema would be an understatement.
His characters were often angry, frightened, compromised, humiliated or trapped by social circumstances. He gave them a psychological depth that made their struggles feel real.
Puri’s importance to Indian parallel cinema was not just that he acted in serious films. It was that he became one of the actors through whom this cinema found its most powerful human expression.
The British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine described him as a major figure in India’s parallel cinema movement, highlighting his collaborations with filmmakers such as Govind Nihalani and Satyajit Ray.
“Om Puri was never typecast but he often played stern and intimidating figures, so unlike his modest and quiet off-screen person. He was by no means conventionally good looking – his face was scarred by smallpox and he had a large nose. Yet his expressive face was mesmerising, able to emote while barely twitching a muscle. He leaves a large oeuvre and has set a high benchmark for Indian actors to follow,” BFI wrote.
In Aakrosh (1980), he conveyed the anguish of a tribal man trapped in an unjust system, delivering a devastating performance with extraordinary restraint. Then in Ardh Satya (1983), he portrayed Inspector Anant Velankar, a police officer torn between personal integrity and institutional corruption. He captured the psychological burden of a man struggling against a world that continually compromised his ideals.
Puri’s National School of Drama batchmate and co-star Naseeruddin Shah collaborated with him on multiple films including Aakrosh, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai (1980) and Mandi (1983), in which Puri played a sleazy photographer in Shyam Benegal’s film.
“His success in the West and when he spoke to me about working with Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg, filled me only with happiness. Om was the salt of the earth. There’s no other way to describe him. He remained real and rooted all his life. Success or failure didn’t change him. There was not a pretentious or pompous bone in his body,” Shah said in an interview.
Also read: Om Puri, the actor par excellence who ruled both art and commercial cinema
Mainstream and comedy
Yet, Om Puri’s genius was never confined to serious, socially conscious cinema.
In Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983), he demonstrated his ability to inhabit dark comedy, while films such as Drohkaal and Maachis revealed his command over morally complicated characters.
His range extended effortlessly into mainstream Hindi cinema.
The same man who anchored parallel cinema turned up as Khadak Singh in Hera Pheri (2000), a bumbling, bad-tempered landlord. Then there was Bhaisaab in Chup Chup Ke (2006) and the grumpy old Rangeela in Singh Is Kinng (2008). His comic timing wowed audiences. But his comedic roles in the 2000s often sidelined his potential as an actor.
That said, for true-blue Puri fans, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (2003), a modern-day take on Macbeth, did actual justice to his potential.
The same actor who could convey institutional corruption, social oppression and psychological dramas could also make people laugh.
His comedy was not necessarily based on the high-energy physical antics associated with commercial comic performers like Rajpal Yadav and Johnny Lever. It usually came from timing, and the ability to react with sarcastic one-liners.
Hollywood and Britain
Puri’s early exposure to international cinema came with a brief appearance in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). However, his major breakthrough in English-language cinema came with City of Joy (1992), in which he played Hasari Pal, a poor rickshaw puller in Kolkata, opposite Patrick Swayze.
He then appeared in Hollywood productions such as Wolf (1994), starring Jack Nicholson, and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), along with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. These roles established him as a dependable character actor in international productions.
British cinema, however, offered Puri some of the most significant opportunities of his career. In My Son the Fanatic (1997), he played Parvez, a Pakistani immigrant and taxi driver in Britain whose relationship with his son becomes strained by religious radicalisation.
But, his most celebrated British performance came in East Is East (1999), where he played George Khan, a Pakistani immigrant father struggling to reconcile his cultural traditions with the British identities of his children. The performance earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He later reprised the character in West Is West (2010).
In Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), he portrayed Pakistani President General Zia-ul-Haq, sharing the screen with prominent Hollywood actors Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
One of his last major international roles was that of an Indian chef in a remote French town in The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), opposite Helen Mirren. It was a rare moment when Puri was a focus of a film produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Puri’s international career was significant because he challenged stereotypical representations of South Asian characters.
Did Om Puri not get his due?
In an interview with BBC, while promoting East is East, Puri revealed that his big regret was that he would “never get the kind of roles given to Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.”
He reportedly felt that “Hindi cinema mostly concentrated on younger, good-looking actors, and the industry had relegated him to roles of the father of a lead actor or a police officer.”
“He was rarely offered meaty roles, he complained,” the report stated.
After being appointed honorary OBE in 2005 for services to British cinema, Puri in a conversation with The Guardian had revealed that “work dried up from this country” and the industry no longer offered complex parts in Indian cinema like Aakrosh and Arohan.
“There are hardly any such roles left,” Puri said.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)