65 Facts About Saeed Jaffrey

Saeed Jaffrey's career covered film, radio, stage and television roles over six decades and more than 150 British, American, and Indian movies.

Saeed Jaffrey played an instrumental part in bringing together film makers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, and acted in several of their Merchant Ivory Productions films such as The Guru, Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures, The Courtesans of Bombay and The Deceivers.

Saeed Jaffrey became a household name in India with his roles in Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili and Henna, both of which won him nominations for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award.

Saeed Jaffrey was the first Asian to receive British and Canadian film award nominations.

Saeed Jaffrey's memoirs, Saeed: An Actor's Journey, were published in 1998.

Saeed Jaffrey died at a hospital in London on 15 November 2015, after collapsing from a brain haemorrhage at his home.

Saeed Jaffrey was posthumously given the Padma Shri award in January 2016.

Saeed Jaffrey was born on 8 January, 1929 to a Punjabi Muslim family in Malerkotla in the Punjab Province of British India.

Saeed Jaffrey's 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.

Saeed Jaffrey had two brothers, Waheed and Hameed, and a sister, Shagufta.

Saeed Jaffrey's 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.

In 1938, Saeed Jaffrey joined Minto Circle School at Aligarh Muslim University where he developed his talent for mimicry.

At Aligarh, Saeed Jaffrey mastered the Urdu language and attended riding school.

In 1941 at Mussoorie, Saeed Jaffrey attended Wynberg Allen School, a Church of England public school, where he picked up British-accented English.

Saeed Jaffrey played the role of the Cockney cook, Mason, in the annual school play, R C Sherriff's Journey's End.

Saeed Jaffrey played the role of Kate Hardcastle in the annual school play, Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer.

In 1945, Saeed Jaffrey gained admission to Allahabad University where he completed his BA in English literature in 1948 and MA in medieval Indian literature in 1950.

At Allahabad, Saeed Jaffrey learned about Hindu religion and mythology for the first time.

When India gained independence from Britain on 15 August 1947 Saeed Jaffrey heard Jawaharlal Nehru's inaugural speech on All India Radio as the Prime Minister of India, titled "Tryst with Destiny".

Saeed Jaffrey was awarded his MFA in drama from the Catholic University of America in 1957.

In February 1951, Saeed Jaffrey travelled to New Delhi to try his luck as a cartoonist, writer or broadcaster.

Saeed Jaffrey successfully auditioned as an announcer at All India Radio.

Unable to afford a place to stay and having no relatives in the city, Saeed Jaffrey spent his nights on the bench behind the office building.

At Unity Theatre, Bahadur and Saeed Jaffrey acted together in Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Frequent, followed by Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Tennessee Williams' Auto-da-Fe, and William Shakespeare's Othello.

In late 1955, Saeed Jaffrey won a Fulbright scholarship to study drama in America the following year.

In summer 1956, Saeed Jaffrey resigned from his position as Radio Director at All India Radio.

Saeed Jaffrey flew to London on his way to America and proposed to Bahadur.

Saeed Jaffrey refused but gave him a tour of RADA where she pointed out a young Peter O'Toole and other English stage actors who would later achieve prominence.

In 1957, Saeed Jaffrey graduated from the Catholic University of America's Department of Speech and Drama and was selected to act in summer stock plays at St Michael's Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont.

Saeed Jaffrey arranged for Bahadur to join him there after she graduated from RADA.

Saeed Jaffrey was the first Indian to take Shakespearean plays on a tour of the United States.

Saeed Jaffrey was cast in the role of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet.

Saeed Jaffrey played Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew.

Midway through the tour, Saeed Jaffrey returned to Washington DC from Miami to marry Bahadur in a modest civil ceremony.

The next day, they travelled to New York City where Bahadur was taken on as a tour guide at the United Nations while Saeed Jaffrey undertook public relations work for the Government of India Tourist Office.

Between 1959 and 1962 Bahadur and Saeed Jaffrey had three daughters, Meera, Zia and Sakina.

In 1958, Saeed Jaffrey joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and played the lead in an Off-Broadway production of Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding.

Saeed Jaffrey took him home for dinner, where he met Madhur for the first time.

In 1959, James Ivory, then a budding filmmaker from California, approached Saeed Jaffrey to provide the narration for his short film about Indian miniature painting, The Sword and the Flute.

Saeed Jaffrey provided the narration for Ismail Merchant's Oscar-nominated short film, The Creation of Woman.

In 1961, Saeed Jaffrey was forced to give up his job as Publicity Officer with the Government of India Tourist Office.

Saeed Jaffrey went back to radio and joined The New York Times Company's radio station WQXR-FM, where his first broadcast programme was Reflections of India with Saeed Jaffrey.

Saeed Jaffrey played the role of the Wigmaker in a three-week run of a theatre version of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon at Fort Lee Playhouse in New Jersey.

Saeed Jaffrey appeared briefly in Rabindranath Tagore's The King of the Dark Chamber along with Madhur.

In November 1962 Madhur and Saeed Jaffrey appeared in Rolf Forsberg's Off-Broadway production of A Tenth of an Inch Makes The Difference.

In 1963, Saeed 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 1965, Saeed Jaffrey was offered the role of Brahma in Kindly Monkeys at the Arts Theatre, London.

Saeed Jaffrey played the small part of barrister Hamidullah in the BBC Television adaptation of A Passage to India.

In early 1966, Saeed Jaffrey returned to New York City to play the haiku-karate expert Korean police chief Kim Bong Choy in Nathan Weinstein, Mystic, Connecticut that opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Back in London, Saeed Jaffrey was given the opportunity to shoot in India for the next Merchant Ivory film, The Guru.

Saeed Jaffrey flew to Bombay in December 1967 and met his daughters after a gap of three years.

Saeed Jaffrey returned to London in the summer of 1968.

Saeed Jaffrey became the first Indian in a starring role in London's West End theatre when he played a Pakistani photographer in On A Foggy Day.

Saeed Jaffrey was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2001 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during the curtain call of the musical The King and I at the London Palladium.

Saeed Jaffrey 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.

In 1980, Saeed Jaffrey married Jennifer Sorrell, an agent and freelance casting director.

Saeed Jaffrey converted to Christianity and attended Sunday service with his wife at St Mary's Church in South Ealing, where his funeral took place.

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

Saeed Jaffrey died in the early hours of 14 November 2015 at a London hospital.

Saeed Jaffrey had collapsed at his London residence from a brain haemorrhage, and never regained consciousness.

Saeed Jaffrey appeared in many Bollywood and Hollywood movies, and appeared with actors including Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.

Saeed Jaffrey starred in films directed by Satyajit Ray, James Ivory, Richard Attenborough, and John Huston.

Saeed Jaffrey appeared in many Bollywood films in the 1980s and 1990s.

Saeed Jaffrey appeared as Ravi Desai on Coronation Street and in Minder as Mr Mukerjee in Series 1 episode The Bengal Tiger.