Kabir Bedi

Biography

Kabir Bedi (born 16 January 1946) is an Indian actor. His career has spanned three continents covering India, the United States and especially Italy among other Western countries in three media: film, television and theatre. He is noted for his role as Emperor Shah Jahan in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story and the villainous Sanjay Verma in the 1988 film Khoon Bhari Maang. He is best known in Italy and Europe for playing the pirate Sandokan in the Italian TV miniseries and for his role as the villainous Gobinda in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. Bedi is based in India and lives in Mumbai.

== Early life and education == Kabir Bedi was born in Lahore in the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab, Pakistan) on 16 January 1946. His father, Baba Pyare Lal Singh Bedi, was a Punjabi Sikh author, philosopher and a direct descendant of Guru Nanak. His mother, Freda Bedi, was an English woman born in Derby, who became famous as the first Western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism. He was educated at Sherwood College in Nainital, Uttarakhand, Delhi Public School Mathura Road and St. Stephen's College in Delhi.

== Career == Bedi began his career in Indian theatre and then moved on to Hindi films. He remains one of the first international actors from India who started out in Hindi films, worked in Hollywood films and became a star in Europe. His first appearance on television was as a newsreader on Doordarshan's news programme Mirror of the World, at a time when its signal only reached Delhi. Shortly after the success of the Sandokan miniseries in Europe, by 1978, he was considering moving to Los Angeles in order to follow a more active role in the US film industry, using an apartment there as his base. He also suggested changing his name to sound more English.

=== Stage acting === As a stage actor, Bedi has performed Shakespeare's Othello as well as portrayed a historical Indian king in Tughlaq, and a self-destructive alcoholic in The Vultures. In London he starred in The Far Pavilions, the West End musical adaptation of M. M. Kaye's novel, at the Shaftesbury Theatre. In 2011 Bedi played Emperor Shah Jahan in Taj, a play written by John Murrell, a Canadian playwright for the Luminato Festival in Toronto. In 2013, this play was recommissioned and went on an eight-week multi-city tour of Canada.

=== Film career === In the James Bond film Octopussy, Bedi played the villain's aide Gobinda. He has acted in over 60 Indian films. In the historical epic Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story, he starred as the Emperor Shah Jahan. Other starring Hindi film roles include Raj Khosla's Kuchhe Dhaage, Rakesh Roshan's Khoon Bhari Maang and Farah Khan's Main Hoon Na. Bedi shot a movie with Hrithik Roshan (Kites), Govinda (Showman), and Akshay Kumar (Blue). He acted in the Tamil film Aravaan, directed by Vasanthabalan. Bedi played roles in Columbia Pictures' The Beast of War, a film on the Russian war in Afghanistan, directed by Kevin Reynolds, as well as the acclaimed Italian film Andata Ritorno, by Marco Ponti, winner of the David di Donatello Award. In 2017, he acted in the Telugu historical movie Gautamiputra Satakarni, as Nahapana, an important ruler of the Western Kshatrapas.

=== Television career === Bedi has appeared on American television, in Hallmark's African epic Forbidden Territory, and Ken Follett's On Wings of Eagles and Red Eagle. He played Friar Sands in The Lost Empire, for NBC. He also acted in Dynasty, Murder, She Wrote, Magnum, P.I., Hunter, Knight Rider and Highlander: The Series. In Europe, his greatest success was Sandokan, the saga of a romantic Southeast Asian pirate during British colonial times, an Italian-German-French TV series which broke viewership records across Europe. In 2007, he starred in the fifth season of a prime-time Italian television series, Un Medico in Famiglia, on RAI TV, playing the role of Kabir Dahvi, an Indian immigrant who opened a restaurant. A cameo in the 2025 series, whose title character is played by Can Yaman and whose second season was entering pre-production in December 2025, is on the cards. For over a year, Bedi starred in The Bold and the Beautiful, the second most-watched television show in the world, seen by over a billion people in 149 countries. He had his own cinematic talk show on Indian TV, Director's Cut, a 13-part special series interviewing the country's leading directors. His success on television continued in 2013 with award-winning prime-time shows Guns and Glory: The Indian Soldier and Vandemataram, for India's news channels Headlines Today and Aaj Tak.

In the Indian Biblical television series Bible Ki Kahaniya, Bedi played both the young and aged Abraham.

=== Radio career === In 2007, he starred in Chat, a radio show aired by Rai Radio 2, in the role of Sandokan. In 2012, he did a series of Radio One programmes titled Women of Gold and Men of Steel in honour of industry champions in India. In 2017 he did another series in English for Radio One, Ten on Ten, celebrating the top ten innovations out of India. He also did the year-end special series, Best of 2017.