Motilal

The first naturalistic actor in Hindi film (1910-1965)

Motilal did something almost nobody around him was doing in the 1930s and 40s: he underplayed. Where the theatre-trained actors declaimed, he spoke, and the gap between his manner and theirs is audible in any film that puts them in the same scene. He is thirty-three here opposite a fourteen-year-old Nargis in her first leading part. His best-remembered work came later - Chunnilal in Devdas (1955), the drunk friend who is the only honest person in the film, and Parakh (1960), which won him a Filmfare award. He died in 1965 with Chhoti Chhoti Baatein, which he produced and directed himself, unfinished.