Biography

He started as an unpaid actor, going regularly to the school and hoping like so many others that the break would come. It is difficult to describe the anxiety of waiting and hoping that someone would give him a role, all the time looking at the bright goal of stardom from my uncertain position and waiting, waiting, waiting for that first chance, the first break. It came. I was offered a role in S. Mukerji's "Dil Deke Dekho," starring Shammi Kapoor and Asha Parekh. He was to play the villain. He was so happy to get the part that for a week he celebrated my good luck.

Arrived in Bombay with the grand sum of Rs. 18-42 nP. in his pocket. He started job-hunting. In this he was singularly unsuccessful. After three weeks of fruitless knocking on doors and hearing those oft-repeated words, "We'll let you know," he decided that since Bombay firms seemed unable to appreciate my virtues he had better try something else. But what? He had to make a living and couldn't find an opening anywhere.

He was really down-and-out, than he met the man who was to change the course of his life: P. D. Shenoy, Principal of Filmalaya's School of Acting. It was a casual meeting and they sat and talked about life in general. As he spoke, Siddhu realized that here was a man who was a cut above the ordinary. Intelligent and very well-read, he was in complete contrast to the people I had so far met. Our meeting ended with his offering to accept me in the acting school.