In Remembrance: Amrish Puri
Amrish Puri, the Indian actor best known to Western audiences for
his turn as a villainous cult leader in Indiana Jones And The
Temple Of Doom, has passed away Wednesday January 12, 2005 in
Mumbai, India. He was 72.
Born on June 22, 1932 in Navshera, Punjab, India, Puri originally had aspirations to be a screen hero. In 1954, he managed to secure a screen test, partly through his brother Madan Puri, an already established screen actor. However, it was felt that Puri had a face that was “too harsh”. Puri instead concentrated on acting in both live theatre and on radio before shifting to films starting with the 1971 romance Reshma aur Shera.
Puri’s first big role was as a corrupt village landlord in director Shyam Benegal’s 1975 Nishaart. Benegal would cast Puri in his next two films- Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977). His first breakout performance came in 1981’s Hum Panch, which solidified his stature as Bollywood’s leading villainous actors. He would eventually go on to appear in over 220 films in his 33-year career, almost all of them in India’s film industry.
In 1982, he was cast in was Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1982 epic bio-pic Gandhi. It was this performance that caught the attention of director Steven Spielberg, who cast him in the role of Mola Ram, the head of a murderous cult bent on retrieving three mystical stones, in the adventure film Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984). Shaving his head for the role, Puri stood out in the film that did well at the box office despite mixed reviews. Although the performance brought him many offers for further work in Western films, he elected to stay working in India cinema. (He also chose to keep the baldpate for several years.)
In addition to villainous roles in such films as Damini (1993) and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Puri was able to essay more sympathetic characters in films like the loving family patriarchs in films like 1995’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. He even parodied his own bad-guy persona in 1987’s Mr. India.