BOLLYWOOD star Dharmendra has died in the Indian city of Mumbai at the age of 89.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to the actor, saying his passing “marks the end of an era in Indian cinema”.
Dharmendra, who often described himself as “a simple man”, commanded extraordinary affection and loyalty from his tens of millions of fans.
Best known as Veeru, the lovable petty criminal in the 1975 blockbuster Sholay, he appeared in over 300 films, many hits, captivating audiences for decades.
Songs featuring him topped the charts, and his romance and marriage with Hema Malini made headlines.
Dubbed the “original He-Man of Bollywood” and “Garam (hot) Dharam”, the actor often made it to global lists of “most handsome men” in his heyday and female fans were known to sleep with his photographs under their pillows.
Bollywood stars weren’t immune to his charms either – over the years actress Madhuri Dixit described him as “one of the most handsome people I have seen on screen”, superstar Salman Khan said Dharmendra was the “most beautiful looking man” and actress Jaya Bachchan called him “a Greek God”.
Dharmendra always said he was “embarrassed” by talk of his good looks and attributed it to “nature, my parents and my genes”.
Born on 8 December 1935 in village in Punjab’s Ludhiana district in a middle-class Jatt-Sikh family, he was named Dharam Singh Deol by his schoolteacher father.
In a 2018 interview with BBC Hindi, he said his father wanted him to study, but he fell in love with films early on and wanted to be a hero.
“I watched my first film when I was in the ninth standard and I was hooked. I was wondering, where is this heaven where all these beautiful people live? I thought I must find my way there. I felt like they were mine and I belonged to them.”
But when he told his family, they were appalled.
