Veteran stage, film and television actor Tom Alter breathed his last on 29th September 2017. He was 67 years old and was battling an advanced stage of skin cancer. Tom Alter was a third generation American of his family, who had made India his home.
He had many, many acting credits to his name; he was a graduate of the prestigious Film andTelevision Institute of India (FTII), but the stage will always recall him in his role as "Lucky" in Samuel Beckett's landmark play WAITING FOR GODOT where he performed alongside Benjamin Gilani and Naseeruddin Shah.
In theatre, he has also played an array of historical characters such as the famed poet Mira Ghalib, Maulana (Maulana Azad) and the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar in Dr. Sayeed Alam's productions, among others. He spoke fluent Urdu. Our website would be regularly updated of these plays, and on one occasion, we had the opportunity to do an interview with him, which we reproduce here. Before he became an actor, he was a sports teacher and writer and was the first person to do a televised interview with a young Sachin Tendulkar, all of 15 years.
In 2008 he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.
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