Full of Character

Prince or pauper, intense or flighty, silent or singing, the Hindi film hero acted out a rainbow life. A pick of the best.

- JAI ARJUN SINGH

Ashok Kumar

By 1947, Ashok Kumar had already been a star—Hindi cinema’s first male star—for years, and was about to see a pivotal new generation take over. He lingered as protagonist, and as a significant presence in films like Bandini (1963) or the handful built around a trio with Pradeep Kumar-Meena Kumari. But for decades, ‘Dada Moni’ retained a vital relevance as a character actor, occasionally stretching himself in edgier or more central roles in, say, Jewel Thief (1967) or Aashirwad (1968), then settled down into being one of our best-loved grandfatherly figures. None of that erases the young Ashok—the accidental 25-year-old hero of Achhut Kanya (1936), the slick hipster of Kismet (1943) and many other B&W classics, producer at Bombay Talkies, mentor and friend to younger talents.

Balraj Sahni 

His farmer-turned-rickshaw puller adrift in the big city (Do Bigha Zamin, 1953)—infinitely graceful in pain—became a touchstone of film acting. A light effortlessness with the spoken word combined with the method actor’s rigour in how he got under a character’s skin, from Dharti Ke Lal (1946) to his great swansong as the patriarch in Garm Hava (1973), magisterial and vulnerable at once. In between came scores of roles, not always as leading men but always bringing gravitas and depth—as well as occasional playfulness, as in the early sequences of Waqt (1965).

Amitabh Bachchan