Tom Alter

Tom Alter got the opportunity to work for big banner films When Tom Alter came to Mumbai after his acting course from FTII he was fortunate to get roles in Bollywood as there was a dearth of firangi or Europeans actors to play European actor in Bollywood. Thus Tom Alter initially got a majority of roles as a European as he suited ideally for European role. His first film was Ramanand Sagar’s Charas (1976) in which he played a European Chief Custom Officer, who is the boss of actor Dharmendra. The film was a huge hit and Tom was flooded with similar roles by top filmmakers like Nasir Hussain’s Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin; Dev Anand’s Des Pardes, Manoj Kumar’s Kranti, Subhash Ghai’s Karma, Manmohan Desai’s Parvarish, Rakesh Roshan’s Khoon Bhari Maang etc. While most filmmaker used Tom Alter usually in roles of European, filmmaker Raj Kapoor, was an exceptional filmmaker. He gave Tom Alter an impressive role of a village chief Karam Singh, who lives on the hills near Ganga river. He is shown as a valiant and protective elder brother of Ganga (Mandakini). He played the role superbly and since then other filmmaker noticed Tom Alter and began giving him roles other than European. Vidhu Vinod Chopra was another director who exploited the better side of Tom Alter in his film Parinda (1989). In this film he gave Tom the role of an underworld don, Musa. Tom Alter had the opportunity to work under eminent filmmaker like Shyam Benegal (Junoon), Ketan Mehta’s Sardar in which he played Lord Lord Mountbatten, Yash Chopra’s Veer Zaara, Mahesh Bhatt’s Aashiqui etc. Tom Alter tryst with TV When the TV industry was making wave and many Bollywood actors were trying their careers in TV, Tom too did few good TV serials like Betaal Pachisi, Shaktimaan, Captain Vyom, Zabaan Sambhalke etc. Tom Alter and his passion for theatre Tom Alter had passion for theatre since school days. It took shape when he along with his FTII friends Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani launched a theatre group called Motley Productions in 1977. Tom has also been a part of a New Delhi theatre group called Pierrot’s Troupe. Among the popular plays include 'Jashn-e-Maazi (The Play of History) in which Tom portrays leading historical figures such as Maulana Azad, Mirza Ghalib, Manto, Saahir Ludhianvi, Rabindranath Tagore, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Alfred Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. One of his sarcastic dramas is 'Teesveen Shatabdi' which takes a grave look at the atomic bomb attack in Japan. His other popular play is Once Upon A Time, a collection of five short stories. Tom Alter worked in Hollywood films Tom Alter also had the pleasure of working in Hollywood films. He worked in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). In addition he also acted alongside Peter O’Toole in the Hollywood movie One Night with the King(2006). Besides Hollywood, Tom has worked in many regional cinema movies like Kanneshwara Rama (Kannada); Anuragakarikkinvellam (Malayalam); Adajya (Assamese); Kailashey Kelenkari (Bengali); Kevi Rite Jaish (Gujarati); Daptar - The School Bag (Marathi).