Om Puri

Puri was born in Ambala, Haryana in a Punjabi Khatri family and spent the early part of his life living with his maternal uncle in Sanaur (Patiala), Punjab, India. He graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India. He is also an alumnus of the 1973 class of National School of Drama where Naseeruddin Shah was a co-student


Puri has worked in numerous Indian films and also in many films produced in the United Kingdom and the United States. He made his film debut in the 1976 film Ghashiram Kotwal, a film based on a Marathi play of the same name. He has claimed that he was paid "peanuts" for his best work. He has collaborated in many films with Amrish Puri as well as Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil in art films such as Bhavani Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Mirch Masala (1986) and Dharavi (1992).
He has also been active in Punjabi cinema. In the 1980s, Puri also made two highly successful Punjabi films called Chan Pardesi (1980) and Long Da Lishkara (1986). After nineteen years, Puri returned to Punjabi cinema with the film Baghi (2005). He recently acted in another Punjabi film, Gurdas Mann's Yaariyan (2008).

He was critically acclaimed for his performances in many unconventional roles such as a victimized tribal in Aakrosh (1980) (a film in which he spoke not a single line of dialogue, save for during flash-back sequences), Jimmy's manager in Disco Dancer (1982), a police inspector in Ardh Satya (1982), where he revolts against life-long social, cultural and political persecution and for which he got the National Film Award for Best Actor, the leader of a cell of Sikh militants in Maachis (1996), as a tough cop again in the commercial film Gupt in 1997, and as the courageous father of a martyred soldier in Dhoop (2003).
In 1999, Puri acted in a Kannada movie A.K. 47 as a strict police officer who tries to keep the city safe from the underworld which went on to become a huge commercial hit. Puri's acting in the movie is very memorable. He has rendered his own voice for the Kannada dialogues. In the same year, he starred in the successful British comedy film East is East, where he played a first generation Pakistani immigrant in the north of England, struggling to come to terms with his far more westernised children.