OM PURI

(18 October 1950 - 6 January 2017)

The award-winning Indian actor enjoyed great success in Bollywood, Hollywood and Pinewood in a career that included over 300 appearances in both film and television. He must have been one of the hardest working actors in the world. He entered films in India in 1975 making features and shorts, including Satyajit Ray’s TV movie Deliverance (1981). He had a small part in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and, in the 1980s, sometimes made up to nine films a year, most of which never reached the UK. However, we would know him from Roland Joffé’s Time Traveller and City of God, filmed in India, Wolf, The Ghost and the Darkness, My Son the Fanatic, The Jewel in the Crown TV series, and most notably East is East, about a Pakistani father’s troubles with his family in Manchester. The sequel was West is West. He was also in The Parole Officer, The Zookeeper, Ismail Merchant’s The Mystic Masseur, Code 46,  Charlie Wilson’s War, The Hundred Foot Journey and Viceroy's House. And he still has another four films awaiting release. He received an honorary OBE in 2004.

MICHAEL DARVELL