Favorite Bollywood Villain Dies at 72
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Amrish Puri, Bollywood’s favorite villain and one of several Indian actors to find roles in British and American movies, died Wednesday in a Bombay hospital from a brain hemorrhage related to an earlier fall in his home. He was 72.
Puri acted in some 220 Bollywood movies after his 1971 debut in the Hindi film “Reshma Aur Shera.”
Some of the best-known movies in which Puri appeared were “Naseeb” (“Fate”), “Ardh Satya” (“Half Truth”), “Andha Kanoon” (“Blind Law”), “Shakti” (“Strength”), “Coolie” (“Porter”) and “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (“The Big-Hearted Will Walk Away with the Bride”).
With his deep voice and gruff, evil laughter, he was one of a growing number of Indian actors to find roles in British and American movies.
Puri played a small role in Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning 1982 movie “Gandhi” as Khan, the nonviolence leader’s Muslim sponsor in South Africa, where Mahatma Gandhi began his fight against injustice.
He shaved his hair for the part of the villain Mola Ram in Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” in 1984.
