Charismatic Bollywood star who found fame in Hollywood
Irrfan Khan, who has died aged 53, was one of the biggest stars of Hindi cinema, said The Times. But though he was often referred to as a Bollywood leading man, it was a term he objected to. The Indian film industry “has its own technique, its own way of making films that has nothing to do with aping Hollywood”, he said. “It originates in Parsi theatre. So why did they lose their identity by calling it Bollywood?” Yet with a clear understanding of their similarities and differences, he mastered both genres, and became one of the few Indian actors who were also in demand in Hollywood.
Khan made his screen debut aged 18, in
the Indian-American director Mira Nair’s first feature film; and went on to take leading roles in everything from the inspired to based on the 1944 film noir His English-language films included the Oscar-winning (he was the policeman wearily interviewing the young Dev Patel); and in which he played a flamboyant billionaire. But one of the roles he found most rewarding was in Michael Winterbottom’s drama said The Guardian, about the search for the kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. “I feel that, as an actor, if I could do these kinds of stories that can possibly change things somewhere, then I’m doing my job. I’m giving back something to the world because it cannot be one way – I cannot keep consuming and doing things just for entertainment.”
Bombay!,
Maqbool, Laura.
Jurassic World,
Rog,
A Mighty Heart,
Salaam
Macbeth
Slumdog Millionaire
Life of Pi;
Irrfan Khan was born in Tonk, Jaipur, into a well-connected family. His father owned a tyre business. His mother was a descendant of the Tonk royal family. Neither of them wanted him to go into acting: they hoped he would become a teacher. After completing his master’s, he applied to the National School of Drama in Delhi, telling his parents that he planned to become an acting teacher.
Considered insufficiently handsome for romantic leads, he plugged away in TV soaps for several years, “chasing middle-class housewives” as he put it. He was about to give up when he was cast in the title role of the British director Asif Kapadia’s film It opened at international festivals, won a Bafta, and opened doors for him at home. Then Hollywood came calling. “Wanting fame is like a disease,” he once said, “and one day, I will want to be free from this disease, from this desire. Where fame doesn’t matter. Where just experiencing life and being okay with it is enough.” Few of the films he made in Hollywood displayed his full talents, though he made the best of what he was given, said The Daily Telegraph. In 2013, however, he was justly praised for his “subtle and affecting” performance as a widowed accountant who strikes up a correspondence with a lonely young housewife, via a misdirected tiffin box, in the Mumbai-set film
The Warrior.
The Lunchbox.
In 2018, Khan revealed that he had been diagnosed with a rare cancer, but carried on working. He is survived by his wife, Sutapa Sikdar, and their two sons.