Amol Palekar

Amol Palekar Biography

Amol Palekar is a famous actor, director and producer of Hindi and Marathi movies. He has directed many award winning films at international film festivals and he is known for his versatility and talents as a film producer. He has proved several times to a good comic actor too. He is a successful theatre actor too and his experiences in dramas have helped a lot in directing critically well acclaimed movies of all time. He debut in plays as well as cinemas during early 70’s and continued them both parallel.

As an actor his debut movie was Shantala, Court Chalu Ahe – A Marathi movie. In 1974 he debut Bollywood through two low budget movies – Rajani Ganda and Ek Choti si baat. Surprisingly, heroine was same for both movies – Vidya Sinha and the director too was the same – Basu Chatterjee. Both became sucecsful and songs became quite popular that time. Yesudas began to be associated with Amol’s voice and in future also, he sang many Amol palekar songs including Chitchor. After these two serious roles, Hrishikesh Mukherjee casted him in two comedy movies – Golmaal and Naram Garam. Golmaal is still considered as classic comedy and through this film, Amol Palekar won his first Filmfare for best actor (1975).  

In most of the movies, he was casted as ‘hero/youth of today’ in search of job. This character was repeated in his next movies too – Baton baton mein, Chitchor and Gharonda. All his movies were successful, well acclaimed and were splendid with good tunes and lyrics too. He has acted in one Malayalam movie too. Olangal of 1982 was remade to Hindi as Masoom next year. ‘Velambal thedum’ sung by Yesudas is still an evergreen song of Malayalam.  In most of his movies, less known actresses were casted against him. Yet most of them proved successful. Vidya Sinha, Zareena Wahaab, Tina Munim, Ranjeetha, Mousmi Chatterjee, Smita patil, Zaheera, Reena Roy, Bindiya Goswami and Shabana Azmi were casted repeatedly in his movies.

As a director, his first movie was Aakriet in Marati. Shah Rukh Khan movie ‘Paheli’ directed by him was the direct Indian entry to Oscars. Dayraa, Quest and Dhoosar were the best among Amol’s directorial venture. He has acted in a few Bengali movies and a couple of south Indian movies too.  

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Updated: June 12, 2018