Dilip Kumar Biography

Indian actor

Alternate titles: Muhammad Yusuf Khan

now one of the legends of indian cinema dilip kumar has died at the age of 98.the winner of more awards than any other indian actor kumar has been praised for the range of his roles born muhammad yusuf khan kumar first found work in the industry as a scriptwriter but moved in front of the cameras in1944. critical success came rapidly with films like didar meaning the site in 1951 devdas in 1955 and muklai azam which became one of the biggest box office hits in bollywood well i'm joined now by asean chabra who's an author of several biographies of bollywood stars anddirector 

of the new york indian film festival thank you very much asim for joining us here on the programme i know he was 98 but he is now such a huge loss to the indian film uh fraternity as well as india in general yeah you know he had been undone for a very long time and also dilip kumar i think his last film was released like in the late 1990s which probably did not do well so in fact his last hit was probably in the early 1990s so he had obviously not been acting for a very long time but he was such a legendary figure and until about five six years ago when he was not well before that he was his health was more or less fine he was constantly invited to film events to awards and things like that and the impact that he had on the film industry over the decades i mean amitabh bachchan was one of the most popular indian actors and shahrukh khan who became very popular in the 90s and 2000s they both sort of secretly desired having a bit of dilip kumar in them uh and you know so it's the kind of admirers that they left kumar had because of the the work he did the roles he played 

um indian cinema hindi cinema especially in the 40s and 50s and even after that tend to be very melodramatic very over the top sort of acting and one of the dilip kumar's greatest contributions was that he um he underplayed his roles um he he brought a sort of a nuanced sort of acting style uh which had not been experienced before um a lot of the other actors were coming from theater background for instance so they were over playing as there was an audience in trump sitting in front of them but actually he also had a a melancholy about him didn't he about so i don't know about his personal life no no in in his acting i mean it was always a tragic lover yes so he was cast as a tragic lover and he did very well there and uh that took him places and you know but it was always a very quiet kind of tragedy it was you know he would do there's a film called devdas which was released in 1955 based on a classic uh indian novel and it's been uh been made into films many times after that also but it was that quiet tragedy of his way he would be drinking um and slowly slowly sort of becoming melancholic really um which is what he was really respected for and you know as an audience then i i was very 

young then because i mean his performances belong to my parents generation and then when i was a teenager i was watching him in some films also his roles his characters stayed with you and when we would think about those films we would think about dilip kumar indeed and it's not just uh uh prime minister modi uh talking about his sadness and and people within india we've also had imran khan the prime minister of pakistan uh tweet his sadness because of course.

dilip kumar was born in

what's known as peshawar today and that 

was before petition in 1944 right and he got one of the uh you know he won many many awards in india many awards from the indian government but he got one of the highest honors from the pakistani government also you know indian cinema even though india and pakistan became two separate countries in 1947 but indian popular cinema the hindi language cinema which we sometimes also call

bollywood 

uh has stayed very popular in pakistan um the language the cultures are so similar um and dilip kumar you know given the fact that he's he was obviously born muslim

so he was a muslim man although he had 

taken a hindu name um was a lot was very very popular in pakistan for many of those reasons uh indeed just very briefly i mean tell us a little bit more about his legacy because as you say big stars today like shahrukh khan amitabh

bachchan 

looked to him and were admired i really admired his work i would say dilip kumar was our lawrence or libya they left kumar was a gregory peck i mean it was that kind of stature he had and that kind of hefty has an actor it was not just the fact that you know the people who consider him to be that senior and actor um he was so brilliant in his performances i mean you know lawrence olivier could never go wrong in any performance and that was dilip kumar also i mean he started doing comedy much later um and various kind of other roles um but he was really really revered and respected uh across the board by practically everybody in the film industry and beyond of course you know the fans and as you said in india and pakistan and the diaspora and the south asians across the world who really really must be feeling his loss 

today very much so assam chopra thank 

you very much for joining us here on the program.