Saeed Jaffrey (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 150 British, American, and Indian movies. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was considered to be Britain's highest-profile Asian actor, thanks to his leading roles in the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and television series The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Tandoori Nights (1985–1987) and Little Napoleons (1994). He played an instrumental part in bringing together filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, and acted in several of their Merchant Ivory Productions films such as The Guru (1969), Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983) and The Deceivers (1988).

Jaffrey broke into Indian films with Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977) for which he won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award in 1978. His cameo role as the paanwala Lallan Miyan in Chashme Buddoor (1981) won him popularity with Indian audiences. He became a household name in India with his roles in Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) and Henna (1991), both of which won him nominations for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award.

Jaffrey was the first Asian to receive British and Canadian film award nominations. In 1995 he was appointed an OBE in recognition of his services to drama, the first Asian to receive this honour. His memoirs, Saeed: An Actor's Journey, were published in 1998. He died at a hospital in London on 15 November 2015, after collapsing from a brain haemorrhage at his home. He was posthumously given the Padma Shri award in January 2016.

Early life and education

Saeed Jaffrey was born on 8 January, 1929 to a Punjabi Muslim family in Malerkotla in the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab, India). At that time, his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Fazle Imam of Banur, was the Dewan or Prime Minister of the princely state of Malerkotla. His father, Dr Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, was a physician and a civil servant with the Health Services department of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in colonial India. Hamid's wife and the mother of Saeed Jaffrey was Hamida Begum. Jaffrey had two brothers, Waheed and Hameed, and a sister, Shagufta.

Jaffrey and his family moved from one medical posting to another within the United Provinces, living in cities like Muzaffarnagar, Lucknow, Mirzapur, Kanpur, Aligarh, Mussoorie, Gorakhpur and Jhansi. His father was a doctor in government service who was posted in many rural areas across the United Provinces and the family invariably moved with him. At the time of his birth, Jaffrey's maternal grandfather was the diwan (first minister) of Malerkotla State.

In 1938, Jaffrey joined Minto Circle School at Aligarh Muslim University where he developed his talent for mimicry. In 1939 he played the role of Dara Shikoh in a school play about Aurangzeb. At Aligarh, Jaffrey also mastered the Urdu language and attended riding school. At the local cinemas in Aligarh, he saw many Bollywood movies and became a fan of Motilal, Prithviraj Kapoor, Noor Mohammed Charlie, Fearless Nadia, Kanan Bala and Durga Khote. Unable to afford a place to stay and having no relatives in the city, Jaffrey spent his nights on the bench behind the office building. Mehra Masani, the station director, eventually arranged for him to share a room at the YMCA for ₹30 / month. Jaffrey bought a Raleigh bicycle for the commute. The first production was of Jean Cocteau's play The Eagle Has Two Heads, with Madhur Bahadur playing the role of the Queen's Reader opposite Saeed as Azrael.

After graduation from Miranda House in 1953, Bahadur joined All India Radio. She worked as a disc jockey at night. Jaffrey and Bahadur, having fallen "madly in love", dated at Gaylord, a restaurant in Connaught Place. In late 1955, Jaffrey won a Fulbright scholarship to study drama in America the following year. Midway through the tour, Jaffrey returned to Washington DC from Miami to marry Bahadur in a modest civil ceremony. Merchant approached Jaffrey with a proposal to put on a Broadway production of The Little Clay Cart starring the Jaffreys. Jaffrey took him home for dinner, where he met Madhur for the first time. Jaffrey provided the narration for Ismail Merchant's Oscar-nominated short film, The Creation of Woman (1960). The same year, he appeared in a limited run off-Broadway production of Twelfth Night at the Equity Library Theatre in the role of sea captain Antonio.

In 1961, when The Sword and the Flute was shown in New York City, the Jaffreys encouraged Ismail Merchant to attend the screening, where he met Ivory for the first time. They subsequently met regularly at the Jaffreys' dinners and cemented their relationship into a lifetime partnership, both personal and professional.

In 1963, Jaffrey toured with Lotte Lenya and the American National Theater and Academy to perform Brecht on Brecht, a revue which was seen in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. In summer 1964, Jaffrey along with some actor friends, created a multi-racial touring company called Theater In The Street, giving free performances of Molière's The Doctor Despite Himself in Harlem, Brooklyn and Bedford–Stuyvesant.

By 1964, the Jaffreys' marriage had collapsed. In summer that year he played a role in The Coffee Lover, a comedy starring Alexis Smith that toured Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine. Later that year, he recorded a narration of the Kama Sutra titled The Art of Love for Vanguard Records. It was listed by Time magazine in February 1967 as "one of the five best spoken word records ever made". in 2001 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during the curtain call of the musical The King and I at the London Palladium.

Personal life

Jaffrey's first wife, Madhur Bahadur, who took his name, came from an old and affluent Hindu Kayastha family of Old Delhi. She is a well-known character actress who appeared in a number of Indian and British films, and had a successful career as a food and travel television personality. Jaffrey and Bahadur were married in Washington DC in September 1958 and divorced in Mexico in 1966. They had three daughters: Zia, Meera and Sakina Jaffrey. The latter made her acting debut alongside her mother in Merchant-Ivory's film The Perfect Murder.

In 1998, Jaffrey published his autobiography, Saeed: An Actor's Journey.

Death

Jaffrey died in the early hours of 14 November 2015 at a London hospital. He was 86 years old. He had collapsed at his London residence from a brain haemorrhage, and never regained consciousness.

Filmography

Jaffrey appeared in many Bollywood and Hollywood movies, and appeared with actors including Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan. He starred in films directed by Satyajit Ray, James Ivory, Richard Attenborough, and John Huston.

Awards and nominations

; Civilian Award

  • 2016 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian honour from the Government of India (Posthumously)