Veteran actor Sayaji Shinde has been getting rave reviews for his role of Arvind Shetty in Abhishek Chaubey’s new dark comedy series Killer Soup, which released on Netflix India on Thursday. He plays the elder brother of Prabhakar Shetty, essayed by the lead actor, Manoj Bajpayee. (Also Read: Killer Soup review: A delicious dark comedy saved by Konkona Sensharma)
As Sayaji celebrates his 65th birthday today, here are five things you need to know about the seasoned performer:
Humble origins
Sayaji was born and raised in a farmer’s family of the village Sakharwadi in the Satara district of Maharashtra. His first job was as a watchman for Maharashtra Government’s irrigation department for a pay of ₹165 per month.
Marathi theatre
Sayaji pursued acting first through Marathi theatre. He started doing one-act plays in 1978, and went on to get noticed in plays like Zulva (1987), One Room Kitchen(1989) and Amchya Ya Gharat(1991). He then moved to acting in Marathi cinema.
Bollywood debut
Interestingly, it was Sayaji’s Killer Soup co-actor Manoj Bajpayee who saw an article on the actor in a leading national daily and recommended him to Ram Gopal Varma. The filmmaker cast Sayaji in his 1999 action crime film Shool. He then went on to appear in Bollywood movies like Vaastu Shasrtra (2003), Sarkar Raj (2008), and Sanju (2018).
South dominance
Sayaji had a career breakthrough with Gnana Rajasekaran’s 2000 Tamil film Barathi, where he played Subramanya Bharathi, the popular poet and and writer from Tamil Nadu. He went on to venture into not only Tamil, but also Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada movies.
Killer Soup
On starring in his latest series, Sayaji told Mid-Day, “I judge a director quickly on what kind of script he has. But Abhishek (Chaubey) is such a talented director. It was so difficult to judge him because the script kept me hooked. Even after I returned home from the narration, I kept thinking about the characters. We all realised that it was denser than our imagination.”