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| Paul Bhattacharjee obituary | Paul Bhattacharjee obituary |
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| Paul Bhattacharjee, who has been found dead aged 53, was one of the country's leading British Asian actors, a key member of Jatinder Verma's Tara Arts, a regular at the Royal Shakespeare Company – he was last seen in the West End last year, playing Benedick opposite Meera Syal in the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing – and a popular television and film actor whose roles included Inzamam in the BBC soap EastEnders, an immigration officer called Mohammed in Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and parts in the Bond movie Casino Royale (2006) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011). | Paul Bhattacharjee, who has been found dead aged 53, was one of the country's leading British Asian actors, a key member of Jatinder Verma's Tara Arts, a regular at the Royal Shakespeare Company – he was last seen in the West End last year, playing Benedick opposite Meera Syal in the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing – and a popular television and film actor whose roles included Inzamam in the BBC soap EastEnders, an immigration officer called Mohammed in Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and parts in the Bond movie Casino Royale (2006) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011). |
| He was tall, slim and naturally funny, always meticulous in his movement and perfect in his articulation. He reminded me of an elegant bird – a heron, perhaps, or a flamingo. His eyes twinkled as much as they burned. He slowed things down, rather than speeded them up, but his slowness and deliberation were always an exemplary demonstration of good timing and manners as a performer. | He was tall, slim and naturally funny, always meticulous in his movement and perfect in his articulation. He reminded me of an elegant bird – a heron, perhaps, or a flamingo. His eyes twinkled as much as they burned. He slowed things down, rather than speeded them up, but his slowness and deliberation were always an exemplary demonstration of good timing and manners as a performer. |
| In the mid-1970s, he was the go-to actor for Asian parts in new plays in the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, and it was always a guarantee of an element of class and distinction in the show that night if his name was on the bill. Bhattacharjee was last seen on 10 July leaving a rehearsal for a new play in the same building in Sloane Square, London, part of the new artistic director Vicky Featherstone's Open Court weekly rep season in which he had already played the president of Georgia. His body was found two days later in East Sussex | In the mid-1970s, he was the go-to actor for Asian parts in new plays in the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, and it was always a guarantee of an element of class and distinction in the show that night if his name was on the bill. Bhattacharjee was last seen on 10 July leaving a rehearsal for a new play in the same building in Sloane Square, London, part of the new artistic director Vicky Featherstone's Open Court weekly rep season in which he had already played the president of Georgia. His body was found two days later in East Sussex |
| He was the only son of Gautam Bhattacharjee, a software researcher who was a member of the Communist party in India and was forced to leave the country after his part in the naval mutiny of 1942. In Britain, Gautam met Anne, who was herself from a migrant family of Russian Jews, and their son, Paul, was educated at state schools in Harrow, Middlesex. | He was the only son of Gautam Bhattacharjee, a software researcher who was a member of the Communist party in India and was forced to leave the country after his part in the naval mutiny of 1942. In Britain, Gautam met Anne, who was herself from a migrant family of Russian Jews, and their son, Paul, was educated at state schools in Harrow, Middlesex. |
| In his teens, Paul was involved in anti-racist campaigns in London and met Verma, who became his great friend and mentor, in workshops they both attended in Southall. Verma recognised from the start a fellow spirit whose highly developed social conscience was linked to a remarkable artistic imagination. Tara Arts, Britain's first Asian theatre company, was formed by Verma in 1977 and Bhattacharjee was an actor and director with them over the next 10 years, notably in Yes, Memsahib (1979), which documented the formation of modern east Africa by colonial Indian "coolie" labour; Diwali (1980), which he directed, an epic story set against the annual festival of lights; Meet Me (1983), which highlighted mental illness in the Asian community; and The Little Clay Cart (1984), a delightful adaptation by Verma of an eighth-century classic as a fable on poverty and revolution. | |
| One of his most crucial roles was that of Gandhi in a play Verma wrote, and Anthony Clark directed, for the Edinburgh festival fringe in 1982. Gandhi emerged in this play as the first modern Asian, Verma said, in the way we understand such a definition. The impression this experience made on Bhattacharjee never left him and informed his entire subsequent career. | One of his most crucial roles was that of Gandhi in a play Verma wrote, and Anthony Clark directed, for the Edinburgh festival fringe in 1982. Gandhi emerged in this play as the first modern Asian, Verma said, in the way we understand such a definition. The impression this experience made on Bhattacharjee never left him and informed his entire subsequent career. |
| He showed up tellingly in Murmuring Judges, the second of David Hare's "state of the nation" trilogy, at the National Theatre in 1991, but gravitated more naturally towards the RSC, where he played leading roles in John Marston's The Malcontent, the disputed Shakespearean history Edward III and Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor in the Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, season of 2002 which Thelma Holt and Bill Kenwright later presented in the West End. | |
| In the next two years he gave major leading performances as the dyspeptic, limping paterfamilias in a brilliant 2003 Young Vic revival of Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, relocated to modern day Salford by Tanika Gupta and director Richard Jones, and as a very funny Malvolio in a 2004 West End Twelfth Night set in Kerala in southern India. | In the next two years he gave major leading performances as the dyspeptic, limping paterfamilias in a brilliant 2003 Young Vic revival of Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, relocated to modern day Salford by Tanika Gupta and director Richard Jones, and as a very funny Malvolio in a 2004 West End Twelfth Night set in Kerala in southern India. |
| But perhaps his most unusual and remarkable performance was in Complicite's ensemble production, directed by Simon McBurney, of A Disappearing Number (2007), in which the mystery of maths at the highest level turned out to be a thing of real beauty. The hinge of the dramatic dissertation was the friendship, around the time of the first world war, between the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy, who believed that mathematicians were only makers of patterns, like poets and painters, and the Brahmin vegetarian autodidact Srinivasa Ramanujan. The air of magical contrivance was sustained by encasing this friendship in the expositions of a narrator physicist – played by Bhattacharjee – and a Hardy disciple many years later. | But perhaps his most unusual and remarkable performance was in Complicite's ensemble production, directed by Simon McBurney, of A Disappearing Number (2007), in which the mystery of maths at the highest level turned out to be a thing of real beauty. The hinge of the dramatic dissertation was the friendship, around the time of the first world war, between the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy, who believed that mathematicians were only makers of patterns, like poets and painters, and the Brahmin vegetarian autodidact Srinivasa Ramanujan. The air of magical contrivance was sustained by encasing this friendship in the expositions of a narrator physicist – played by Bhattacharjee – and a Hardy disciple many years later. |
| Having toured with this highly acclaimed production to festivals in Vienna and Amsterdam, in 2008 he plunged into two years of EastEnders, before returning to the RSC in Dominic Cooke's Arabian Nights (2009) and the Much Ado with Syal which, in its modern Mumbai setting and gorgeous colouring, was an update, perhaps, on the famous 1976 RSC production (Judi Dench and Donald Sinden) set in the last days of the Indian Raj. | Having toured with this highly acclaimed production to festivals in Vienna and Amsterdam, in 2008 he plunged into two years of EastEnders, before returning to the RSC in Dominic Cooke's Arabian Nights (2009) and the Much Ado with Syal which, in its modern Mumbai setting and gorgeous colouring, was an update, perhaps, on the famous 1976 RSC production (Judi Dench and Donald Sinden) set in the last days of the Indian Raj. |
| In the past decade he had appeared regularly, also, at the Tricycle theatre in Kilburn in Nicolas Kent's series of verbatim documentary dramas, notably as Moazzam Begg, one of the detainees of the US military in Guantanamo (2004), and in The Great Game: Afghanistan (2009) cycle of short plays and the two-part meditation on the nuclear threat, The Bomb (2012). | In the past decade he had appeared regularly, also, at the Tricycle theatre in Kilburn in Nicolas Kent's series of verbatim documentary dramas, notably as Moazzam Begg, one of the detainees of the US military in Guantanamo (2004), and in The Great Game: Afghanistan (2009) cycle of short plays and the two-part meditation on the nuclear threat, The Bomb (2012). |
| He came full circle to the Royal Court, even before the current season, with their first "off-piste" season in Peckham in late 2011, playing a surly, hangdog shopkeeper on a Battersea housing estate in Rachel De-lahay's lively debut play, The Westbridge. He was a break-through actor par excellence, associated with many innovations and adventures in our theatre, and fondly remembered for his television appearances, not only in EastEnders, but in many other shows including Spooks (2004-08) and The Bill (1992-2004). | He came full circle to the Royal Court, even before the current season, with their first "off-piste" season in Peckham in late 2011, playing a surly, hangdog shopkeeper on a Battersea housing estate in Rachel De-lahay's lively debut play, The Westbridge. He was a break-through actor par excellence, associated with many innovations and adventures in our theatre, and fondly remembered for his television appearances, not only in EastEnders, but in many other shows including Spooks (2004-08) and The Bill (1992-2004). |
| He was divorced and is survived by his mother and his son, Rahul. | He was divorced and is survived by his mother and his son, Rahul. |
| • Gautam Paul Bhattacharjee, actor, born 4 May 1960; found dead 12 July 2013 | • Gautam Paul Bhattacharjee, actor, born 4 May 1960; found dead 12 July 2013 |