Amrish Puri, the ‘Villain Perfect’ of Bollywood, was the youngest among three brothers. The two elder brothers, Chaman and Madan Puri, had carved out a niche for themselves in the Tinsel Town, mostly playing negative or villainous roles in Hindi films, though Madan Puri was better known than his elder brother, Chaman, in the filmland when the genes in Amrish Puri impelled him to follow in the footsteps of his two elder siblings. In fact, Madan Puri enjoyed almost a star status like his best-known elder colleague, Pran.
Amrish began his acting career by doing roles in theatre productions, written and directed by a very well-known name, Satya Dev Dubey, at Prithvi Theatre, located in Santa Cruz, a Mumbai (then Bombay) suburb. The Puri Brothers came from the State of Punjab, and their first claim to fame was that the legendary singer, K L Sehgal, was their first cousin. Since the elder brothers were already established names, Amrish had little difficulty entering the film industry. Once Amrish had made a name as a stage actor, television ads slowly started coming his way, and, finally, the youngest Puri graduated to Hindi commercial films, initially playing minor or supporting roles as a villain or his sidekick.
I had met Amrish and taken his pictures at his residence early in his and my own career in the early eighties.
Amrish’s acting prowess was first noticed in a 1980 box office hit Ham Paanch, which was a remake of a Kannada blockbuster produced by actor Anil Kapoor’s elder brother Boney Kapoor. His other successful films of the years 1982-83 were Vidhata, Shakti, and Hero, in which he was cast opposite the biggies of the industry, Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar. But he had to wait for another four years to achieve really big success in Shekhar Kapoor-directed Mr India, which was released in the year 1987. In this super successful movie, Amrish played a villain named Mogambo, and his dialogoue ‘Mogambo khush hua’ became extremely popular with the masses, turning into an epithet for his reel life villainy.
After the tremendous box office success of Mr India, there was no looking back for Amrish Puri. Even Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film Gandhi didn’t give the name, fame and recognition that Mr India gave to Amrish Puri.
While his two elder brothers, Chaman and Madan, remained basically confined to Hindi and Punjabi movies, Amrish went International with Steven Spielberg’s 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in which he had to shave his head for the character he was playing. Later on, he decided to keep his bald look, keeping his popularity intact.
In a career spanning almost four decades, Amrish Puri, while mainly staying with Hindi films, also acted in many other language films like Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi. Some of his very successful films are Shakti with Amitabh and Dilip Kumar, Tridev, Ghayal, Karan Arjun and Chachi 420 with Kamal Hasan. Though he had essayed many positive character roles too, he is mainly known for and was successful in villainous roles.
Amrish Puri, who was born in 1932, passed away in the year 2005.
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