Saeed Jaffrey OBE (8 January 1929 – 15 November 2015) was a British-Indian actor His career covered film, radio, stage and television roles over six decades and more than 200 British, American, and Indian movies and TV shows. International titles included “Gandhi,” “The Man Who Would Be King” “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “A Passage to India.”
Though I was born a Muslim, my father’s job as a medical officer meant that we travelled a great deal and I went to Hindi schools, Muslim schools, public schools, C of E and Catholic schools. I was exposed to a Muslim school, so I learnt Urdu. I was exposed to a Hindu school, so I learnt Hindi. I was exposed to a Church of England school, so I got my Senior Cambridge certificate.
Saeed Jaffrey
He appeared in classic Indian films including Satyajit Ray’s “The Chess Players (Shantranj Ke Khiladi),” “Chashme Bad Door,” “Ram Teri Ganga Maili,” and many more
Saeed Jaffrey, one of India’s most beloved actors, was born on January 8, 1929 to a Punjabi Muslim family in Malerkotla, Punjab. At that time, his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Fazle Imam, was the Dewan or Prime Minister of the princely state of Malerkotla.
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In 1938, Jaffrey admitted to Minto Circle School at Aligarh Muslim University, where he developed his talent for mimicry and developed his love for cinema.
He also attended Wynberg Allen School, Mussoorie & St. George’s College, Mussoorie where he honed his skills and picked British English. He completed his BA in English literature in 1948 and MA in medieval Indian literature in 1950 from Allahabad University. He got his his MFA in drama from the Catholic University of America in 1957.
Jaffrey started his career as an English Announcer with the External Services of All India Radio in 1951. At the same time, he set up his theater company, “Unity Theatre,” with Frank Thakurdas and “Benji” Benegal, which performed works by Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. He met his future wife, Madhur Bahadur, during rehearsals for his first theater production, and both fell for each other.
In 1955, Jaffrey won a Fulbright scholarship to study drama in America and graduated from the Catholic University of America’s Department of Speech and Drama In 1957. In 1958, Jaffrey joined Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio and played the lead in an Off-Broadway production of Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding. The same year, Ismail Merchent approached Jaffrey with a proposal to put on a Broadway production of “The Little Clay Cart,” starring Saeed and Madhur, who are now married.
Next year, Jaffrey provided the narration for James Ivory’s short film The Sword and the Flute (1959) and Ismail Merchant’s Oscar-nominated short film, The Creation of Woman (1960). He did “Reflections of India with Saeed Jaffrey” for New York Times Radio WQXR-FM. For next 5 years, he worked extensively in theater; he also appeared on Broadway in a stage version of E. M. Forster’s novel “A Passage to India.”
During this time Madhur and Saeed drifted apart and their divorce was finalised in 1966.
Jaffrey shifted his base to London in the late 1960s, where he appeared on the West End and worked for the BBC, writing and broadcasting scripts in Urdu, Hindi, and English. In 1967, he was offered the Merchant Ivory film, The Guru (1969).
In “The Man Who Would Be King,” John Huston’s 1975 adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling novel, he played an interpreter who helped two former British soldiers in India, played by Michael Caine and Sean Connery, in their efforts to amass a fortune. It was his breakout role.
His first Indian film, Shatranj ke Khiladi, “The Chess Players,” directed by the celebrated Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, was released in 1977 to great critical acclaim. In 1981, he did Sai Pranjpe’s cult classic “Chashme Buddoor,” where he played a Delhi paanwala. To prepare for the role, he visited the vendors around the narrow lanes near the Jama Masjid mosque in Old Delhi, speaking to them while aiming to grasp their diction and vocabulary, she said.
He played the Indian statesman Vallabhbhai Patel in Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” in 1982 and was in the British mini-series “The Jewel in the Crown” in 1984 and, in 1985, in a major part as a hustling businessman in Stephen Frears’s “My Beautiful Laundrette” and in a smaller role in David Lean’s “A Passage to India.”
Jaffrey was prolific on British television and appeared on several hit shows, including “The Jewel in the Crown,” “Gangsters,” “Coronation Street,” “Little Napoleons,” and “Tandoori Nights.” His impeccable diction and ability to speak both Urdu and British English also made him a familiar voice on BBC Radio and the Asian Network.
Jaffrey’s rendition of the Kama Sutra was listed by Time magazine as “one of the five best spoken word records ever.”
He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1995 for his contributions to drama. Jaffrey passed away on November 15, 2015, in London. He was 86. The next year, in 2016, the Government of India awarded him a posthumous Padma Shri.
