Sunil Dutt's first big role is called Bollywood's first anti-hero
In Mother India, the highest-grossing film of 1957, a newcomer named Sunil Dutt played Birju, the rebellious son of the heroine played by Nargis. Critics have since called the character Hindi cinema's first anti-hero. The following year Dutt married Nargis, and decades later he entered Parliament for five terms.
Named Balraj Dutt at birth, he came into the world on 6 June 1929 in the Punjabi village of Nakka Khurd, in Jhelum District, which now lies in Pakistan. His father died when he was five. At Partition, when he was 18, a Muslim friend of his late father named Yakub helped the whole family reach safety in India, where they settled in a village beside the Yamuna. Dutt later moved to Bombay, worked for the BEST transport undertaking and took a history degree from Jai Hind College in 1954.
The director Ramesh Saigal met him in 1953 while Dutt, then a Radio Ceylon presenter, was reporting from a film set. Saigal offered a part on the strength of his voice, but Dutt had promised his mother he would finish his studies first. He debuted after graduating, in Railway Platform (1955), and took the screen name Sunil to avoid being confused with the established actor Balraj Sahni.
Stardom followed quickly. Playing a bandit in Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), which he also produced, won his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor at a moment when leading men avoided dark roles. In 1964 he directed Yaadein with himself as its only performer, an experiment that flopped commercially but won a National Film Award and a Guinness entry for the fewest actors in a narrative film. Waqt was the top earner of 1965, Khandan brought a second Filmfare prize, and in the 1968 comedy Padosan he surprised audiences as the bumbling lover Bhola.
The rise of Rajesh Khanna from 1969 slowed him for a few years, and his self-directed Reshma Aur Shera failed at the box office before gaining a cult following. Heera in 1973 restored him, now in tougher action parts. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1984, represented Mumbai North West and served as sports minister from 2004 to 2005. His son Sanjay became an actor too, and his final film was Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. He died on 25 May 2005, after more than 80 films.
Source: Sunil Dutt
