Iftekhar

Personal Life & Career

Iftekhar or Iftekhar Khan (passed away Marching 4, 1995) was a character actor in Bollywood cinemas, peculiarly known for his characters as police officers in several films.

His debut film was "Fashionable Wife" in 1938 and since then he acted in over 200 movies in a career that crossed from the 1950s through to the early 1990s. His parts ranging from father, uncle, grandfather, police officer, police commissioner, courtroom judge and doctor. He besides appeared in two episodes the American TV serial Maya in 1967 as well the the English language movies Bombay Talkie (1970) and City of Joy (1992).

Veteran character actor Iftekar had a career in cinemas that crossed over 50 years. He is one of the handful of elite Hindi movie actors who has acted in over 300 movies. Like many of the older character actors who inhabited the Bollywood universe of the 1960s and 70s Iftekar had been a lead actor in his youth during the 'golden age' of Bollywood in the 1940s and 50s.

In the 1960s and 70s Iftekar graduated to playing uncle, father, and what came to be his distinctiveness the police inspector roles. Broadly he played 'sympathetic' characters, but on occasion he played the heavy. One of his most memorable characters as a heavy was as Amitabh Bachchan's corrupt industrialist mentor in Yash Chopra's classic "Deewaar" (1975).

Another of Iftekar's definitive roles was as the police inspector in Parkash Mehra's "Zanjeer". It was a small part, but the scene where Iftekar reprimands the close hysteric Amitabh Bachchan for taking the law into his own hands is incredibly powerful. Besides "Deewaar" and "Zanjeer" Iftekar besides had character roles in many of the classics of 1960s and 70s Bollywood cinema, Bimal Roy's "Bandini", Raj Kapoor's "Sangam", Manoj Kumar's "Shaheed", "Teesri Manzil", "Jony Mere Naam", Hare Rama Hare Krishna, "Don", "The Gambler", and "Sholay" to name but a few.