Om Prakash Puri was an iconic Indian actor, born on October 18, 1950, in Ambala, East Punjab, India. Although he came from a poor family, Om always kept up with his education. He attended both the National School of Drama and the Film and Television Institute of India. Acting in several films every year, Om had done 280+ before he died. He did art films, as well as, mainstream films in many languages. His first film was the children’s film ‘Chor Chor Chhup ja’ in 1975. Om’s first commercial film was ‘Ghashiram Kotwal’ (1976/Marathi). He brought life to a  wide variety of characters in his films such as ‘Aakrosh’ (1980) as a mistreated tribal, ‘Disco Dancer’ (1982) as the manager of a rising dance champion, ‘Ardh Satya’ (1982/National Film Award for Best Actor) as a righteous cop in a corrupt city, ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’ (1983) showed his comic-timing, ‘Seepeeyan’ (1984) as the lower cast husband betrayed woman, ‘Maachis’ (1996) as a Sikh militant in the late 1980s Punjab, and in ‘Dhoop’ (2003) as the grieving professor father of a martyred soldier. Other great Om movies are ‘Aakrosh’  (1980), ‘Aroha’ (1982), ‘Droh Kaal’ (1984), ‘Giddh’ (1984), ‘East is East’ (1999/British), ‘Delhi 6’ (2009), and  ‘Heri Pheri’ (2000).
Om worked in Hollywood with ‘City of Joy’ (1992), ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ (1996), and in several British films ‘Gandhi’ (1982), ‘My Son the Fanatic’ (1997), and the most recent ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ (2014) with Helen Mirren. He also appeared in several notable television shows like ‘Tamas’ (1988), ‘Kirdaar’ (1993), and ‘Woh Chokri’ (1994). In 1990, Om received the Padma Shri, the Indian government’s fourth highest civilian award. In 2009, he was presented with a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award. Om died of a heart attack at his home in Mumbai on January 6, 2017. He was 66.