Dilip Kumar

Yusuf Khan (Hindi: यूसुफ़ ख़ान) (born 11 December 1922), popularly known as Dilip Kumar (Hindi: दिलीप कुमार) Dilip Kumar is considered to be the greatest actor of Indian cinema and he also was a former Member of Parliament. He lives in Pali Hillin the Mumbai suburb of Bandra.

Starting his career in 1944, Kumar has starred in commercially successful films of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s.His performances have been regarded as the epitome of emoting in Indian Cinema. He was the first actor to receive a Filmfare Best Actor Award and holds the record for most number of Filmfare Awards won for that category. He starred in a wide variety of roles such as the romantic Andaz(1949), the swashbuckling Aan (1952), the dramatic Devdas (1955), the comicalAzaad (1955), the historical romance Mughal E Azam (1960) and the social Ganga Jamuna (1961). In the 1970s roles dried up for Kumar and he left film in 1976 for a five-year break. In 1981 he returned with a character role in the blockbuster filmKranti and continued his career playing central character roles in hits such asShakti (1982), Karma (1986) and Saudagar (1991) his last film was Qila in 1998.

|Contents |

| [hide] |

|1 Early life |

|2 Career |

|3 Public life |

|4 Personal life |

|5 Brotherhood |

|6 Awards |

|7 Filmography |

|8 Incomplete / un-released films |

|9 References |

|10 External links |

[edit]Early life

Dilip Kumar was born Muhammad Yusuf Khan at Mohallah Khudadad, on the back of Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa formerly North West Frontier Province, British India (part of Pakistan since 1947). He was born to a Hindko-speaking family of Afghan origin with twelve children. His father, Lala Ghulam Sarwar, was a fruit merchant who owned large orchards in Peshawar and Deolali inMaharashtra near Nashik. The family relocated to Mumbai in the 1930s and in the early 1940s Yusuf Khan moved to Pune and started a canteen business and supplying dried fruits.

In 1943, actress Devika Rani, who was also the wife of the founder of the Bombay Talkies film studio, Himanshu Rai, helped Khan's entry into the Bollywood film industry. Noted Hindi Author Bhagwati Charan Varma gave him the screen name Dilip Kumar and gave him the leading role in his film Jwar Bhata (1944). Devika and her husband Svetoslav Roerich spotted the young and smart-looking Khan in one of Pune's Aundh military canteens.

[edit]Career

His first film with Nisar Bhai and Hamed Bhai Jwar Bhata was released in 1944 and went unnoticed. In 1947 he shot to prominence working with the legendary singer and actress Noor Jahan, who agreed to act opposite him in the film Jugnu. In 1949, he co-starred with Raj Kapoorin the romantic melodrama Andaz, which made him a star and in 1955 he co-starred with Dev Anand in Insaniyat. Throughout the 1950s he was one of the biggest stars of Bollywood along with Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand. He became known for playing tragic roles in popular films such as Deedar (1951), Amar (1954), Devdas (1955) and Madhumati (1958), which earned him the title of "tragedy king".

He also played lighthearted roles such as a swashbuckling peasant in Aan (1952) and a comic role in Azaad (1955). In 1960 he starred in thehistorical film Mughal-e-Azam which as of 2008 was the second highest grossing film in Hindi film history[1]. He played the role of the Mughalcrown-prince Salim-later becomes Jehangir in history-not in the movie Mughal-e-Azam, the son of Akbar.

In 1961 he produced and starred in the hit Ganga Jamuna in which he and his real-life brother Nasir Khan played the title roles. Despite the film's success he did not produce any films after this. In 1962 British director David Lean offered him the role of Sherif Ali in his 1962 blockbuster, Lawrence of Arabia, but Kumar declined the part. The role eventually went to Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor. After a brief period of box office flops in the mid 1960s, he played a dual role of twins separated at birth in the film Ram Aur Shyam (1967) which was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. The success of Ram Aur Shyam spawned a number of remakes and imitators.

In the 1970s Kumar acted in fewer films as newer actors such as Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan had begun to take the spotlight. The 1976 film Bairaag in which he played triple roles flopped badly, so he took a five year break from acting.

He made a comeback in 1981 with the multi-starrer Kranti, the biggest hit of the year. He went onto play character roles as an elderly family patriarch or a police officer in a string of box office hits including Shakti (1982) (in which he starred alongside the reigning superstar of the time Amitabh Bachchan), Vidhaata (1982), Mashaal (1984) and Karma (1986). In his last major film, Saudagar (1991), he appeared alongside another legendary actor Raaj Kumar, three decades