New Delhi: Victor Banerjee had burst at the silver screen in 1977 because the hookah-smoking Madr-ud-Daula, ‘prime minister’ of Awadh, in Satyajit Ray’s ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’, and he keeps that it was the biggest wreck of his career that has seen him acting in English, Hindi, Bengali, and Assamese language films, running with marquee administrators inclusive of David Lean, James Ivory, Roman Polanski, and Ronald Neame, and closer domestic, with Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Ram Gopal Verma.
A winner of the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for ‘Ghare Baire’, also directed by Satyajit Ray, he is the best Indian movie persona to have won the National Film Award in three categories — the other as Cinematographer, for his documentary ‘Where No Journeys End’, and as Director, for his documentary ‘The Splendour of Garhwal and Roopkund’.
In reality, ‘Where No Journeys End’, in competition with three, one hundred entries from 27 international locations, won the Gold Award at the Houston International Film Festival.
It’s been quite an eclectic adventure for Banerjee, who changed into born in a zamindari Bengali Hindu own family and is a descendant of the Raja Bahadur of Chanchal (now inside the Malda district of West Bengal) and the Raja of Uttarpara (in Hooghly district).
He turned down a scholarship to Dublin’s Trinity College, which had offered to admit him as an operatic tenor, but later he have become the lead tenor inside the Calcutta Light Opera Group manufacturing of ‘The Desert Song’, and additionally performed Jesus within the Bombay Theatre’s first-ever musical production, ‘Godspell’.
Schooled at Shillong’s St Edmund’s School, Banerjee graduated in English Literature from Kolkata’s St Xavier’s College and obtained a Master’s in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University.
In 1984, Banerjee portrayed Dr. Aziz Ahmed in David Lean’s ‘A Passage to India’, which added him to the eye of western audiences. He turned into nominated for a BAFTA award for the role in 1986 and gained the Evening Standard British Film Award and NBR (US National Board Review) Award for the equal movie.
In April 1985, at a unique event in Louisiana, in which John Travolta and American TV actress Loretta Swit had been additionally commemorated, Banerjee obtained the ‘Show-a-Rama Award’ from the Motion Picture Association of America as ‘New International Star’.
There were different memorable roles too, as an instance in Merchant-Ivory’s ‘Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures’ and in Mrinal Sen’s ‘Mahaprithibi’.
And, as one recognized to speak his thoughts, Banerjee, at the units of ‘Gunday’ (2014) starring Priyanka Chopra, is stated to have snapped: “I even have a kitchen to run” and “all work is a challenge and consequently amusing”.
Banerjee has also appeared in numerous Bollywood films, appreciably ‘Ta Ra Rum Pum’ (2007), ‘Apne’ (2007), and ‘Sarkar Raj’ (2008). Other large appearances encompass ‘Protidan’ (1983), ‘Byabandhan’ (1990), ‘It Was Raining That Night’ (2005), ‘Delhi in a Day’ (2011), ‘Dev Bhoomi’ (2016), ‘Biporjoy’ (2017) and ‘The Answer’ (2018).
There have additionally been forays into politics. Banerjee unsuccessfully contested the 1991 Lok Sabha election in Calcutta North West on the BJP price tag. He garnered 89, one hundred fifty-five votes and got here in 0.33.
As an energetic member of the BJP, he turned into an essential of the then Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav’s concept that the karsevaks who had stormed the Babri Masjid prior to its demolition have to were shot.
He has additionally been quite critical of what he termed Punjab Congress baby-kisser Navjot Singh Sidhu’s pacifist attitude to terrorism exported from Pakistan.
Born on October 15, 1946, Banerjee is only 75, young by state-of-the-art standards, and one without a doubt hopes the Padma Bhushan will spur him directly to greater heights.