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interview
“People know that I have come up the hard way; I’m not the son of a star, my parents were not part of the film industry, I have slowly and gradually built myself up...”
Photos above: Om Puri in Second Generation and, opposite page l-r, in East Is East with Linda Bassett, The Parole Officer with Emma Williams, Ben Miller & Steve Coogan and The Canterbury Tales
If the demand for an actor could be measured in Air Miles then Om Puri will certainly not be feeling neglected.
In the last few years dozens of British productions have called upon the Bombay-based star of Indian cinema to lend weight and class to their projects. These range from prestige TV produc- tions like White Teeth, Murder, Second Generation and the Canterbury Tales season – to landmark films like East Is East.
Currently in the UK filming The King Of Bollywood, a spoof docu- mentary about the hugely popu- lar Indian filmmaking tradition, Puri divides his time between filming in the west and his native country.
And when he is in India he is just as at home in the more reality based art house cinema as the vibrant and slightly less realistic
Indian mainstream – that’s Bollywood to you and me.
But Puri’s background is in a theatre tradition that many an English actor would recognise, a solid grounding in a variety of dif- ferent styles and classic works that has served him well in the years since he left drama school.
“My father was in the British army, and that was a career I planned to follow,” the 53 year old explains. “But when I went to college I started participating in college plays. Then I bumped into a couple who were from the pro- fessional drama school in Delhi. They saw me in a play and invited me to join their group doing these plays with social relevance. There were also some translated west- ern plays, my first with them was Strindberg’s The Father, followed by Albert Camus’ Cross Purpose.
photo: BBC
“In addition we did some mod- ern Hindi works and plays from other Indian languages. I truly got hooked on to that, and felt it was a wonderful vocation. And I came to know about the National School of Drama in Delhi and after graduation I joined the drama school followed by film school for two years.”
In the last quarter century Puri has worked on more than 175 fea- ture films, a figure that reflects the pace and output of Indian cine- ma as well as Puri’s own startling industry. His first British credits were high quality affairs, Gandhi, under the guidance of Richard Attenborough and The Jewel In The Crown for Granada. City Of Joy, in 1992, offered a major star- ring role in a big Hollywood backed production and also intro- duced Puri to his first proper agent.
well travelled
Acclaimed actor Om Puri talks to Anwar Brett about his continent-hopping career as a star in India and Britain
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