Irrfan Khan began his career in Bollywood about one and a half decades ago with the film “Drishti”. Today he is known for his extremely candid acting and an impressive personality. The striking characters of films like “Maqbool” and the very recent “Life in a Metro”, he is none other than Irfan Khan.
Having his roots in Jaipur, Irfan was studying for his M.A. degree while doing theatre simultaneously. He joined the NSD or the National School of Drama, and bagged a fellowship degree there in 1984. After completing his graduation, Irfan moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) to pursue a full fledged career in acting.
Irfan survived initially by doing television and was given his 1st break into films by the renowned Mira Nair in the film “Salaam “Bombay”. But his role was edited out in the final copy. Even this did not deter this determined actor who went back to delhi to do theatre.
In his 1st released film “Drishti”, Khan worked with stars like Dimple Kapadia and Shekhar Kapoor. Since then there hass been no looking back. He starred in a no. of hits like Tapan Sinha’s “Ek Doctor Ki Maut”, Shyam Benegal’s “Ward no. Six”, “Kasoor” and “Such a Long Journey”.
Irrfan did a variety of tele serials in the 90s which became extremely popular amongst everyone. These were, 'Sparsh', 'Chanakya', 'Darr' , 'Babuji' and 'Banegi Apni Baat'. He also produced some serials.
The new millennium got greater success for Irfan. With films like “Maqbool”, “Rog”, “Charas”, “Chocolate”, “Deadline” and the recent hit “Life In A Metro”, he climbed the steps to success.
Today, Irrfan is a well established actor. He can portray every emotion with equal zeal and is one of the topmost actors of Bollywood. He is married to writer Sutapa Sikdar and has a son named Babil.
Irfan became the first Indian movie star to walk the hallowed red carpet at Cannes after Shahrukh and Aishwarya went up the Grand Theatre Lumiere in 2002 for a special screening of “Devdas”
Having won awards for his role mostly as a negative character, Irfan seems to be the man with grey shades. But that’s only in reel life of course!