Kabir Bedi: The Indian Star Europe Knew as Sandokan

Kabir Bedi has worked in Indian theatre, Hindi cinema, a James Bond film and Italian prime-time television. His career is one of the longest-running examples of an Indian actor building an audience outside India. This piece follows his published biography and keeps to what it records.

Lahore to Delhi

According to his Wikipedia biography, Bedi was born on 16 January 1946 in Lahore, then in British India. His father, Baba Pyare Lal Singh Bedi, was a Punjabi Sikh author and philosopher, and his mother, Freda Bedi, was an English woman born in Derby who became known as the first Western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism. He was educated at Sherwood College in Nainital, Delhi Public School Mathura Road and St. Stephen's College in Delhi.

Theatre, news and Hindi films

He began in Indian theatre and then moved to Hindi films. His first television appearance, the biography says, was as a newsreader on Doordarshan's Mirror of the World, at a time when its signal reached only Delhi. He has acted in over 60 Indian films, including Raj Khosla's Kuchhe Dhaage, Rakesh Roshan's Khoon Bhari Maang (1988), where he played the villain Sanjay Verma, and Farah Khan's Main Hoon Na. He also starred as Shah Jahan in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story.

Europe's pirate

His greatest European success was Sandokan, an Italian-German-French television series about a romantic Southeast Asian pirate in the colonial era, which broke viewership records across Europe. By 1978, the biography says, he was considering a move to Los Angeles and even suggested changing his name to sound more English. He later returned to the character on Italian radio, in Chat (2007).

He played a villain's aide, Gobinda, in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. He also appeared in Columbia Pictures' The Beast of War and in the Italian film Andata Ritorno. On American television, the biography lists Dynasty, Murder, She Wrote, Magnum, P.I., Knight Rider and Highlander: The Series, and says he starred for over a year in The Bold and the Beautiful.

The restaurant and the stage

In 2007 he starred in the fifth season of the Italian prime-time series Un Medico in Famiglia, playing Kabir Dahvi, an Indian immigrant who opens a restaurant. On stage he has played Shakespeare's Othello, a historical Indian king in Tughlaq, and starred in the West End musical The Far Pavilions at the Shaftesbury Theatre. In 2011 and again in 2013 he played Shah Jahan in the play Taj, in Toronto and on an eight-week Canadian tour.

Honours and causes

By decree of the President of the Italian Republic on 2 June 2010 he was knighted as a Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Since 1982 he has been a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he is also a voting member of the Screen Actors Guild. In 2017 he became a brand ambassador for the eye-care charity Sightsavers, and he is honorary brand ambassador for Care and Share Italia, which supports street children in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Broadcasting and writing

He hosted a 13-part series interviewing film directors, Director's Cut, and the award-winning shows Guns and Glory: The Indian Soldier and Vandemataram. He writes on political and social issues for Indian publications.

A caution

The biography's claim that he is one of the first international actors from India who began in Hindi films, worked in Hollywood and became a star in Europe is stated as a general description, not as a ranked list, and should be read that way. His record, though, supports the point that he built an audience across three continents. He is based in Mumbai.

Sources

*Cover photo: Desmond Herzfelder, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).*