Amrish Puri 'stormed off' set because co-star couldn't memorise lines; grandson Vardhan recalls anecdote

Amrish Puri's grandson, Vardhan, has shared anecdotes about his iconic granddad, shared with him by some of his old friends.

Vardhan Puri has shared some anecdotes about his late grandfather, the iconic actor Amrish Puri, that he has picked up over the years from his granddad's old colleagues. Vardhan said that the stories helped dispel his opinion that Amrish was a 'very serious' man, and revealed that he was, in fact, a 'prankster'.

Amrish Puri as Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.(Movie still)

In an interview, Vardhan, who made his acting debut in Yeh Saali Aashiqui, recalled stories about his grandfather, known for his portrayals of villains, as told by Satish Kaushik and Anupam Kher.

He told SpotboyE, “Satish ji told me about this one time during one of his films when one actor wasn’t able to do his lines properly. Dadu had just a 15-minute scene that day and he was completely ready, but because the other actor couldn’t complete his scene, dadu had to wait for his scene for about four hours."

He continued, "At one point, dadu got very angry and upset because even the assistants had no answer to give to him. When he stormed off on the set angrily, Satish ji held him and explained the situation to him and he understood it instantly. He told me how empathetic and sensitive dadu was."

He said that the stories Amrish's old friends shared of him revealed the actor's 'naughty, child-like side'. "I used to think that he was very serious on set, which he was, but I didn’t know that after pack up, he was a prankster too," Vardhan said.

Vardhan in a 2020 interview with Hindustan Times revealed that Amrish was not very fond of celebrating his birthday. "He never liked to make a fuzz about his birthdays. We used to have family dinners, sit in his home theatre to watch classics together, like Hitchcock films, a Satyajit Ray or Kishore Kumar film," Vardhan had said.