Saeed Jaffrey was an India-born British actor. He was the first Asian to receive British and Canadian film award nominations. The British government honoured him with OBE award in 1995 in recognition of his services to drama. He was able to breathe life into the smallest of roles through his nuanced performance. His seductive and resonant voice made him the natural choice as narrator for audio books. His narration of the Kama Sutra titled 'The Art of Love' was listed by Time magazine as "one of the five best spoken word records ever made."
During the 1980s and 1990s he was considered to be Britain's highest-profile Asian actor, thanks to his leading roles in the movie 'My Beautiful Laundrette' and television series 'Tandoori Nights' and 'Little Napoleons.'
He played a major role in bringing together film makers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant and acted in most of their Merchant Ivory Productions films such as 'The Guru', 'Hullabaloo Over Georgie' and 'Bonnie's Pictures', 'The Courtesans of Bombay' and 'The Deceivers.'
He joined Bollywood with Satyajit Ray's 'Shatranj Ke Khilari' for which he won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award in 1978. His cameo role as the paanwala Lallan Miyan in 'Chashme Buddoor' won him popularity with Indian audiences. He 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.
Jaffrey died at a hospital in London on 15 November 2015, after collapsing from a brain hemorrhage.
Early life and education
Jaffrey was born into a Muslim family on 8 January, 1929 in Malerkotla, Punjab. His father, Dr Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, was a physician and a civil servant with the Health Services department of the United Provinces of British India. 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.
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, the last great Mughal Emperor. At Aligarh, Jaffrey also mastered the Urdu language and attended riding school. In 1941 at Mussoorie, Jaffrey attended Wynberg Allen School where he picked up British-accented English. He played the role of the Cockney cook, Mason, in the annual school play. After completing his Senior Cambridge there, Jaffrey attended St. George's College, Mussoorie. He played the role of Kate Hardcastle in the annual school play, Oliver Goldsmith's 'She Stoops To Conquer.'
In 1945, Jaffrey joined Allahabad University and completed his B.A. degree in 1948 and M.A. degree in 1950. At Allahabad, Saeed learnt about Hindu religion and mythology for the first time. Jaffery was awarded his second post-graduate degree, in drama, by The Catholic University of America.
Career
In 1951 Jaffery joined All India Radio in New Delhi and started his radio career as an English announcer. Along with Frank Thakurdas and 'Benji' Benegal, Saeed set up the Unity Theatre, an English language repertory company at New Delhi in 1951. 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. Unity Theatre subsequently staged J. B. Priestley's 'Dangerous Corner,' Dylan Thomas' 'Under Milk Wood,' Molière's 'The Bourgeois Gentleman,' Christopher Fry's 'The Firstborn' and T. S. Eliot's 'The Cocktail Party.'
After graduation from Miranda House in 1953, Madhur joined All India Radio. She worked as a disc jockey at night. Jaffery and Madhur later fell in love. In early 1955, Madhur left to study drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in UK. In late 1955, Jaffrey won a Fulbright scholarship to study drama in America. In spring 1956, he approached Madhur's parents in Delhi for her hand in marriage but they refused because they felt that his financial prospects as an actor did not appear sound. In summer 1956, Saeed resigned from his position as Radio Director at All India Radio. He flew to London on his way to America and proposed to Madhur. She refused the proposal. Later Jaffery departed to New York City.
New York (1958–1965)
In 1957 Saeed graduated from Catholic University of America's Department of Speech and Drama and was selected to act in summer plays at St. Michael’s Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont. Jaffery arranged for Madhur to join him there after she graduated from RADA. He played the lead in three of the plays put on by St. Michael’s Playhouse.
In September 1957, Madhur and Jaffrey returned to Washington, D.C. where Jaffery rehearsed for the 1957 – 58 season with the National Players, a professional touring company that performed classical plays all over America. He was the first Indian to take Shakespearean plays on a tour of the United States. Midway through the tour, Jaffery returned to Washington DC from Miami to marry Madhur. The next day, they travelled to New York City where Madhur was taken on as a tour guide at the United Nations while Jaffery undertook public relations work for the Government of India Tourist Office. Between 1959 and 1962 Madhur and Saeed had three daughters, Meera, Zia and Sakina.
In 1958 Jaffery joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and played the lead in an Off-Broadway production of Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding. At this time, he met Ismail Merchant who had recently arrived from Bombay to attend the New York University Stern School of Business. Merchant approached Jaffery with a proposal to put on a Broadway production of 'The Little Clay Cart' starring the Jaffreys. In 1959, James Ivory, then a budding film maker from California, approached Jaffery to provide the narration for his short film about Indian miniature painting, 'The Sword and the Flute'. Jaffery provided the narration for Ismail Merchant's Oscar-nominated short film, 'The Creation of Woman.'
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.
In 1961 Jaffery was forced to give up his job as Publicity Officer with the Government of India Tourist Office. He went back to radio and joined The New York Times Company's radio station WQXR-FM where his first broadcast program was Reflections of India with Saeed Jaffrey. Jaffery also took up acting on stage.
Within a year of Jaffery joining the Actor's Studio in 1958, he was able to get Madhur admitted there too. However, they left by 1962 because they felt the criticism offered by Lee Strasberg was too much for their sensitivity. In 1963, Saeed 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, Saeed 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. Madhur arranged for their children to live with her parents and sister in Delhi while she went to Mexico for the formal divorce proceedings. The divorce was finalized in 1966.
London
In 1965 Jaffery was offered the role of the Hindu God Brahma in 'Kindly Monkeys' at the Arts Theatre, London. Favourable reviews of the play brought an offer from the BBC World Service to write, act and narrate scripts in Urdu and Hindi. Jaffrey played the small part of barrister Hamidullah in the BBC Television adaptation of 'A Passage to India.'
In early 1966, 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. In summer that year he played a role in The Coffee Lover, a comedy starring Alexis Smith that toured Massachussets, 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"
Back in London, Saeed was given the opportunity to shoot in India for the next Merchant Ivory film, 'The Guru'. He flew to Bombay in December 1967 and met his daughters after a gap of three years. He returned to London in the summer of 1968. He 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.'
In the 1980s Jaffery got meaty roles on British television in colonial dramas like 'The Jewel in the Crown' and 'The Far Pavilions' plus the British Indian sitcom 'Tandoori Nights,' 'Little Napoleons' and the ITV soap 'Coronation Street.'
Filmography
Jaffrey worked with actors including Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan. He starred in popular cinema directed by Satyajit Ray, James Ivory and Richard Attenborough.
His film credits include 'The Man Who Would Be King,' 'Shatranj Ke Khiladi' (The Chess Players), 'Gandhi.' 'A Passage to India' (1965 BBC version and 1984 film), 'The Far Pavilions', 'The Razor's Edge' and 'My Beautiful Laundrette'. He has also appeared in many Bollywood films in the 1980s and 1990s. For television he starred in 'Gangsters,' 'The Jewel in the Crown,' 'Tandoori Nights' and 'Little Napoleons.'
