10 Things You Didn't Know About Om Puri

Indian film industry lost a gem today when Om Puri breathed his last at the age of 66 early today morning and as a way of paying homage to the legendary actor, we present to you 10 unknown facts about Om Puri…

Despite carving a niche for himself as an actor in the Hindi film industry, Om Puri made his acting debut with the 1976 Marathi film ‘Ghashiram Kotwal’, which was based on a play writer by playwright Vijay Tendulkar.

Although an Indian Citizen he was honoured with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire, OBE (Honorary) in 2004 for services to The British Film Industry.

Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah were classmates and friends at the National School of Drama and Puri claimed that though he was a vegetarian, Shah got him to taste non-vegetarian dishes like brain curry and turned him into a meat-lover.

As per Naseer, Om Puri was quite a romantic person and would often charm his female classmates at NSD by bringing flowers and sweets for them.

Puri thought he was not good looking enough to become an actor and hence the joined Film and Television Institute of India in Pune just to enter the Hindi film industry.

It was Puri’s powerful cameo in Richard Attenborough’s Oscar Winning Film ‘Gandhi’ which brought him to the notice of people on the international cinema front.

Om Puri made his international film debut way back in the 90s with British films such as My Son the Fanatic (1997), East Is East (1999) and The Parole Officer (2001). He also appeared in Hollywood films including City of Joy (1992), Wolf (1994) with Jack Nicholson and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) with Val Kilmer. In 2007, he appeared as General Zia-ul-Haq in Charlie Wilson's War, which stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.


In 2016, Om Puri made his debut in the Pakistani film industry with Actor In Law, a socio-comedy directed by Nabeel Qureshi.

Om Puri made a comeback to theatre after 25 years with ‘Teri Amrita’, an adaption to the Indian context of A. R. Gurney’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, Love Letters (1988).

During the course of his career, Om Puri has acted in movies in 8 different languages: Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, English, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and Urdu.