Danny Denzongpa

Danny Denzongpa was born Tshering Phintso Denzongpa on 25 February 1948 in Yuksom, a village high in what was then the Kingdom of Sikkim — a Himalayan monarchy that would not become an Indian state until 1975. He is an ethnic Bhutia, and Bhutia, not Hindi, was his mother tongue.

He was educated at Birla Vidya Mandir in Nainital and St Joseph's College in Darjeeling. By the standards of his time and place he had done everything right: he qualified for the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, a secure and prestigious path into a uniform and a profession.

He withdrew his admission and joined the Film and Television Institute of India instead — in the same city, on the opposite side of a life.

At FTII, his name was a problem. Tshering Phintso Denzongpa was, to most of the industry he was about to enter, unpronounceable. A classmate suggested he shorten it to something simpler. That classmate was Jaya Bhaduri — later Jaya Bachchan.

From that point he was Danny. It is a small story that carries a larger one: to get into Hindi cinema at all, the first thing he had to trade was his own name.

His first film role was in Zaroorat, shot in 1971 and released the following year, but it was Gulzar's Mere Apne (1971) — as Sanju — that put him on the map. B. R. Chopra's Dhund (1973) turned him toward the villain roles that would define him, and Kalicharan (1976), where he played Shaaka, made him a star at it.

In the early 1970s Ramesh Sippy was casting a dacoit for a film called Sholay, and Danny was the choice for Gabbar Singh. He had already committed his dates to Feroz Khan for Dharmatma, which was shooting in Afghanistan — the first Indian feature filmed there.

He said no. In his own account the reason was simple and unglamorous: "It was because of a prior commitment and my word of honour that I had to let go of Sholay." Amjad Khan took the part, and Gabbar Singh became the most quoted villain in the history of Indian cinema.

Danny has never framed it as a wound. "If I had done Sholay," he has said, "we would have missed seeing all the wonderful performances of a wonderful actor called Amjad Khan."

What followed was not a consolation prize. He was Kancha Cheena in Agneepath (1990), the role Sanjay Dutt would later inherit in the remake. He was Bakhtawar in Hum (1991), Khuda Baksh in Khuda Gawah (1992) — which won him the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor — and Katya in Ghatak (1996). Sanam Bewafa brought him a Filmfare for Best Performance in a Negative Role.

He worked in Hollywood, playing the Regent in Seven Years in Tibet (1997) opposite Brad Pitt, and in Tamil cinema as Dr Bohra in Rajinikanth's Enthiran (2010). He was also a playback singer, first recording for Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972) alongside Lata Mangeshkar under S. D. Burman, and his Nepali records were popular through the 1970s and 80s.

In 2003 he was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour.

In 1987, while he was at the height of his film career, Danny went home and started a business. Yuksom Breweries, named for the village he was born in, grew into the largest brewery in North East India.

It is the part of his story that gets the least screen time and may matter most. An actor whose face made him permanently castable as the outsider — the tribal, the foreigner, the warlord — built an asset in his own state, under his own name, that no casting decision could take away from him.

He married Gawa Denzongpa in 1990. Their son, Rinzing Denzongpa, made his own acting debut decades later.