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There are several actors who are engineers by qualification, including R Madhavan, Sonu Sood, Taapsee Pannu and Kriti Sanon. But none of them has had a career graph as steep as Anirudh Agarwal, who went from graduating from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee to playing a formidable monster in Hindi horror movies.
Anirudh, born in Dehradun in 1949, always harboured a love for acting. But he went the engineering path owing to his father’s aspirations. He worked as an engineer first after moving to Mumbai, but soon developed a rare condition. A tumour in his pituitary gland led to his height increasing extraordinarily and his facial features getting distorted.
A friend recommended Anirudh Agarwal to meet Ramsay Brothers who had completed 90% of the shooting for their 1984 horror film Purana Mandir, but were waiting to finish the remaining portion featuring a monster character called Saamri. While Ramsay brothers used monster masks in their films prior to that, they didn’t need to do the same with Anirudh.
“I have such a face — they didn’t even need to put make-up on me. My face… I became a horror face for everyone,” Anirudh told BBC in 2017. “Anirudh had a very different face, even without makeup. If you see him today, if he walks on the street, people will turn around and look at him. He was perfect for us,” said Shyam Ramsay, one half of the director duo.
Anirudh Agarwal quit his engineering job to pursue his acting career. The success of Purana Mandir prompted the Ramsay Brothers to make a spin-off with him, titled Saamri 3D, but that film tanked at the box office. However, they resumed their winning streak with more hits like Bandh Darwaza in 1990 and The Zee Horror Show in 1993.
Anirudh agarwal in Bandh Darwaza. (Express Archive Photo)
Anirudh Agarwal also played a supporting villain role in films like Allah Rakha (1986), Ram Lakhan (1989), Trimurti (1995), Mela (2000), and Talaash: The Hunt Begins (2003). Beyond the Ramsay Brothers movies, Anirudh is best known for portraying the villain Babu Gurjjar in Shekhar Kapur’s 1993 seminal crime drama Bandit Queen.
Anirudh even starred in two Hollywood films — as Tabaqui in Stephen Sommers’ 1994 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s jungle adventure novel The Jungle Book and Sturla Gunnarsson’s 1998 directorial Such A Long Journey, based on Rohinton Mistry’s 1991 book. He was last seen, yet again as Saamri, though not as a monster, in Wilson Louis’ 2010 horror film Mallika.
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Saamri became synonymous with Anirudh Agarwal to the extent that he even appeared in two popular comedy shows on television — Shararat and Hum Paanch as the monster, who runs away from the scene getting scared by their quirky characters. “The Ramsays used to make films with new actors, so they were very happy to see me. And they took advantage of my face. It fit their movies easily. So I became a horror. My face was so scary; nobody could imagine me in any other role,” he lamented.
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Anirudh, who now lives in Mumbai with his wife, started a construction business a few years ago. His kids — a son and a daughter — are settled overseas. “I got kicked out by the industry after a point. So many people struggle so much. I got films, but they didn’t always come frequently enough. I also needed a regular salary. I have no regrets, no anger or anything. I would have liked to act more, but it wasn’t possible. I’m a public figure, lost somewhere in the background, in the crowd,” the actor added.
