Irrfan Khan's Unparallel Journey As An Actor From National Award Winning Cinema To Oscar Winning Hollywood Films

Irrfan Khan was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan to a Pashtun family. Her mother was Saeeda Begum Khan. She belonged to the Tonk family and his father, the late Jagirdar Khan, was from the Khajuriya village near the district of Tonk.

In the year 1984, while studying, he went on to pursue his dreams in NSD in New Delhi. Thereafter, the actor moved to Mumbai where he started his career by acting in television serials. He began with Chanakya, Bharat Ek Khoj, Sara Jahan Hamara, Banegi Apni Baat, Chandrakanta, Shrikant (Doordarshan)  AnooGoonj on Doordarshan, Star Bestsellers and Sparsh.

In the 1990s, he was the main face in the tremendously critically acclaimed Ek Doctor Ki Maut and Such A Long Journey (1998) and various other films which people are not even aware of. In 1998, In Sanjay Khan's Jay Hanuman, Khan played the role of Rantnakar the bandit, who later becomes the enlightened sage Valmiki, the poet who wrote "The Ramayana". After many unsuccessful films, things took a turn when London-based director Asif Kapadia gave him the lead in a film titled, The Warrior, a historical film completed in 11 weeks on location in Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan In 2001 The Warrior opened in international film festivals, making Khan a known face.

In 2003–04 he acted in Ashwin Kumar’s short film, Road to Ladakh. After the film received rave reviews at international festivals, it was made into a full-fledged film with Irrfan in the lead role. In that very year, he was starring in the Vishal Bharadwaj directorial and yet another critically acclaimed film Maqbool.       

In 2005, his first Bollywood film Rog came to the fore in which his performance was hugely applauded by all and sundry. Thereafter, he kept constantly getting villainous roles and he also was awarded the Filmfare Best Villain Award for the film Haasil.

In 2007, he appeared in the huge box office hit film Metro, he also received the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor award and thereafter, Mira Nair’s Namesake happened. These films were followed by A Mighty Heart and The Darjeeling Limited.

Even though he had quite a successful run on films, he didn’t put an end to his television ventures. He anchored a show Mano Ya Na Mano and thereafter Kyaa Kahein on Star One.

In the year 2008, he was in the role of a police officer for Slumdog Millionaire for which he and the cast of the movie won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. The film went on to win 7 Oscars including Best Picture at 2009 Academy Awards.

In 2009, he featured in the film Acid Factory. Khan has stated that he wants to do more action films in the future. Thereafter, he also appeared as an FBI agent in the John Abraham, Katrina Kaif starrer New York, he was a Gujarati diamond merchant in New York, I Love You. His film, Paan Singh Tomar, about a real-life athlete, turned dacoit, all of these were performances that were hugely lauded by the critics.

In the year 2010, he went on to star in the HBO series In Treatment, enacting the part of Sunil, who is finding it difficult to come to terms with his wife's death and loneliness after moving to New York.

Thereafter, he also got the chance to dabble in a few Hollywood projects. In 2012, he played Dr Rajit Ratha in The Amazing Spider-Man. In the same year, Khan played the adult version of Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel in Ang Lee's film adaptation of Life of Pi, which became a critical and commercial success worldwide. 

In 2013, he starred in The Lunchbox which won the Grand Rail d'Or at Cannes Film Festival and received a BAFTA nomination and became his highest-grossing Hindi film up until then.

Thereafter, another commercial film happened in Gunday where he played a cop.  He also made guest appearances in the films The Xpose and Haider. In the latter film, he had a very important part to play as well.

In 2015, he played the lead in Piku with Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan. Khan co-starred in the 2015 film Jurassic World. In the same year, he also starred in the thriller directed by Meghna Gulzar thriller Talvar in which his performance was praised. He appeared in Jazbaa in October 2015 alongside Aishwarya Rai which was very well received by critics. He was next seen alongside Tom Hanks in the 2016 adaptation of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon thriller Inferno.

It was in the year 2017 Irrfan Khan starred in two films Hindi Medium and Qarib Qarib Singlle. Hindi Medium turned out to be a box office success and the film also got him the Filmfare Award For the best actor that year. In 2018, Irrfan appeared in Mithila Palkar and Dulquer Salmaan starrer Karwaan.

Irrfan’s last film was Angrezi Medium. The film failed to do well at the box office because just after it released a nationwide lockdown had been implemented in the country and hence it was shifted to the OTT platform.

With the passing away of the actor, many have expressed intense grief and sorrow. People have flooded the social media platforms with condolence messages. We at Desimartini.com hope his soul rests in peace.