Updated April 29, 2020, 3:47 p.m.
Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan died at the age of 53 after a colon infection. He was especially known for his role in the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire”.
He played roles in Bollywood and Hollywood films such as the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Life of Pi: Shipwreck with Tiger”: Irrfan Khan was considered one of the best Indian actors. He was known for showing a wide range of emotions with a twitch of his eyebrows. It was also one of the most successful exports from India to Hollywood. Now Irrfan Khan has died at the age of 53.
Irrfan Khan has had cancer since 2018
He died of complications from a colon infection, a spokesman for the Mumbai hospital said where the actor had been taken. Khan Krebs was diagnosed in 2018. He was treated longer in London. But he returned to work last year.
Khan played many different roles in more than 80 films and had the ability to put himself deeply into them – whether he acted as the outsider or the top policeman, wrote Indian film critic and director Khalid Mohammed on Khan’s 50th birthday. In “Slumdog Millionaire”, for example, he was the pragmatic policeman who initially questioned the protagonist Jamal skeptically about his suspicion of cheating on a quiz show, and later empathized with Jamal.
Khan grew up in an aristocratic Muslim family in the Indian city of Jaipur. He loved acting since childhood – a love that his family rejected, as Khan repeatedly said in interviews. At the drama school, he met his future wife, a screenwriter. With her he has two sons. He initially played in theater and television productions and almost gave up his career after spending years doing only TV roles that didn’t inspire him.
But then he made his breakthrough on the big screen – and that, although it does not correspond to the classic Bollywood star ideal, that of the always styled one Shah Rukh Khan with his steel body. Irrfan Khan, on the other hand, often had messy hair and stubble. But his talent was convincing, he won awards for his roles in several Indian films, for “Lunchbox” (2013) the audience award at the Cannes Film Festival.
He touched the audience with his game
Bollywood films can often be restrictive because there are many routines, songs and dances, as film critic Suparna Sharma says. But Khan always made small changes and touched his viewers with a convincing, nuanced performance: “If you close your eyes and listen to him, his tone changes in every dialogue.” Foreign filmmakers were always interested in him. He has starred in “A Courageous Way” (2007), “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and “Jurassic World” (2015). But then Khan announced the diagnosis of cancer in 2018.
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan wrote on Twitter that he had left the world too soon and would leave a big gap. And actress Priyanka Chopra, the wife of US singer Nick Jonas, who was already in front of the camera with Khan, wrote: “The charisma that you have brought to everything you have done is pure magic.”
© dpa
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