Veteran Indian-British Actor, Saeed Jaffrey dies @ 86

Saheed Jaffrey was a character actor of enormous accomplishment and deeply honoured in UK theatrical circles for his groundbreaking Shakespearian tours of India.

His very unparochial career let him straddle two different kinds of cinema – Hindi and English language – and also subsets within these: auteur cinema and Bollywood, British and Hollywood, as well as TV both in high-gloss drama and soapy form. To all he brought intelligence, a lifetime’s accumulation of technique and style, and a seductive, resonant voice.

He was an invaluable presence in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) and David Lean’s A Passage to India (1984). On British TV, he starred in dramas ranging from The Jewel in the Crown to Coronation Street. In fact, from a British perspective, his career was part of the whole colonial and post-colonial story in screen culture.

But he is probably most famous for a key role in Satyajit Ray’s masterly drama Shatranj Ke Khilari, or The Chess Players (1977): a delicate, humorous, humane and mysterious Raj drama. Jaffrey embodies all these qualities. He plays Mir Roshan Ali, one of two Indian noblemen in Lucknow in 1856 who are utterly obsessed with the game of chess – a refined but apparently decadent pastime which symbolises their neglect of their nation’s defences, allowing the British to take over. The British are represented by the puce-faced General Outram, played by Richard Attenborough.

 Jaffrey was an ideal cast. He was a jewel of international cinema.