The renowned grand old man of Indian cinema, who toiled in the entertainment sector for nearly three decades. We’re talking about veteran actor Om Puri, who passed away unexpectedly at the start of 2017. This is the type of actor you don’t see very often these days.
The film business has suffered an irreplaceable loss. Om Puri was one of the most talented actors in history. Apart from acting in various Indian films, he also appeared in British and American films.
- Om Puri was born and raised in a Punjabi household in Ambala.
- His family was unsure of his date and year of birth because he lacked a birth certificate or record, but his mother told him he was born two days after Dussehra.
- Om Puri’s uncle chose 9 March 1950 as his official birthdate when he started school, but after he went to Mumbai, he changed it to 18 October 1950 after glancing at the 1950 calendar and seeing that Dussehra was being celebrated.
- Om Puri had to labour in a tea shop when he was seven years old. He went to work at a dhaba a year later.
- Puri graduated from the National School of Drama’s 1973 class, where he studied acting. Naseeruddin Shah, a classmate at NSD, became a close friend of Puri’s, and the two went on to study together at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.
- The board of the Film and Television Institute of India was asked how and why they could accept Om Puri as a student because he “doesn’t look like a hero, nor a villain, nor a comedian,” according to the interview. They all agreed, ‘What use will he be to the industry?’ ‘That is not our concern,’ Karnad insisted on enrolling Om as a student despite the fact that he was a director at FTII.
- At FTII, Om Puri used to share a room with director David Dhawan, who thought Puri was absolutely humourless and wanted to switch rooms.
- Om Puri made his cinematic debut in 1976 with Ghashiram Kotwal, a Marathi film.
- Puri was one of the important actors who kicked off the wave of art films in Bollywood, alongside Amrish Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, and Smita Patil.
- Om Puri was eating lunch with Naseeruddin Shah at a restaurant in Khar when he was stabbed by Jaspal, one of the Shah’s batch mates and close friends. Puri was the one who stopped attacking Shah and saved his life at the time.
- Anil Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Mazhar Khan, Surinder Pal, and Madan Jain were among Om Puri’s students at a Mumbai actor school.
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