Saeed Jaffrey

Saeed Jaffrey, born on 8 January 1929 in Malerkotla, Punjab Province of British India, was a British-Indian actor whose career in film, radio, stage, and television spanned six decades and encompassed more than 150 British, American, and Indian productions. He died on 15 November 2015 in London following a brain haemorrhage at his home. In January 2016 he was posthumously awarded the Padma Shri.

Jaffrey was born into a Punjabi Muslim family. His maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Fazle Imam of Banur, served as the diwan, or first minister, of the princely state of Malerkotla. His father, Dr. Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, was a physician employed by the Health Services department of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and the family relocated frequently across cities including Lucknow, Kanpur, Aligarh, Mussoorie, and Gorakhpur as his postings changed. Jaffrey had two brothers, Waheed and Hameed, and a sister, Shagufta.

His formal education took him through several institutions. In 1938 he enrolled at Minto Circle School at Aligarh Muslim University, where he developed a talent for mimicry and performed in a school play as Dara Shikoh. He later attended Wynberg Allen School in Mussoorie, a Church of England institution where he acquired British-accented English and appeared in R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End, and subsequently St. George's College, Mussoorie, where he played Kate Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. He completed a BA in English literature in 1948 and an MA in medieval Indian literature in 1950 at Allahabad University, and was awarded an MFA in drama from the Catholic University of America in 1957.

Jaffrey launched his professional life in New Delhi in February 1951, beginning a radio career as an English announcer with the External Services of All India Radio on 2 April of that year. Alongside Frank Thakurdas and Benji Benegal, he co-founded the Unity Theatre, an English-language repertory company in New Delhi, whose productions included works by Jean Cocteau, J. B. Priestley, Dylan Thomas, Molière, Christopher Fry, and T. S. Eliot. In 1955 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study drama in the United States, and he subsequently sailed from Southampton to New York aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth.

After graduating from Catholic University of America in 1957, Jaffrey performed in summer stock productions at St. Michael's Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont, taking lead roles in The Teahouse of the August Moon, Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, and The Little World of Don Camillo. He then joined the National Players, a professional touring company, for the 1957–58 season, becoming the first Indian actor to take Shakespearean plays on a tour of the United States.

His Broadway career ran from 1962 to 1966 and included appearances in A Passage to India and Nathan Weinstein, Mystic, Connecticut. During this period he was also instrumental in introducing filmmaker James Ivory to producer Ismail Merchant, a connection that led to Jaffrey appearing in several Merchant Ivory productions over subsequent decades, among them The Guru (1969), Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983), and The Deceivers (1988).

Jaffrey entered Indian cinema through Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari in 1977, a role that earned him the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award in 1978. His cameo as the paanwala Lallan Miyan in Chashme Buddoor (1981) brought him widespread recognition with Indian audiences, and his supporting roles in Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) and Henna (1991) each earned him additional Filmfare Best Supporting Actor nominations.

In Britain, Jaffrey rose to particular prominence during the 1980s and 1990s. His leading role in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and his appearances in the television series The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Tandoori Nights (1985–1987), and Little Napoleons (1994) established him as the country's highest-profile Asian actor of that era. He was the first Asian performer to receive British and Canadian film award nominations. In 1995 he was appointed an OBE for his services to drama, again the first Asian to receive that distinction. His memoirs, Saeed: An Actor's Journey, were published in 1998.