Sunny Deol has inherited the drop-dead Greek god looks and the punch-you-in-the-face action star image from his father. In one scene, his innocence would make him look so gullible and in the next shot he would be a convincing savior for the heroin. One of the most versatile actors in Bollywood, I am talking about Sunny Deol, the son of the legendary Dharmendra.
Sunny, originally christened Ajay Singh Deol is the first born of Dharmendra from his first wife Prakash Kaur. Ajay aka. Sunny was born in New Delhi on the 19th of October, 1956. Sunny did his schooling from Sacred Heart Boys’ High School, Mumbai. However, academics were surely not going to be his cup of tea and so he was off to Birmingham to study acting at the Old Web Theater. The one who had gone to England was a raw lad with a wish to live up to his legendary father’s reputation and the one who returned was to become one of Bollywood’s most dependable actors.
Sunny started his career with the superhit, Betaabi, in 1983. The movie had memorable music and good performances by the lead couple Sunny and Amrita Singh. The audience loved Sunny as a romantic hero in this movie and he was also nominated for the filmfare best actor award for the movie. Unfortunately, post Betabi his career saw a dry spell and the film pundits were trying hard to close his chapter in the industry when he came back with a bang in his new incarnation. His new incarnation was that of an action hero in the movie Arjun in 1985. The action genre films then became his forte and he scored hits such as Ghayal, Tridev, Ghatak, Border, and India. Ghayal won him the Filmfarwe award for the best actor. However, the dare-devil Punjabi lad, famous for his punch, was not to stick to his genre and experimented with romantic roles as well.
Some of his successful movies in romantic roles include Gadar – Ek Prem Katha, Chaalbaaz, Darr, and the commendable Damini. For his tremendous performance in Damini, he deserved nothing less than the national award. In 2007, Sunny was seen in the movie Apne with brother Bobby and father Dharmendra. The trio have appeared together for the first time in a movie. Apne was received very well by the audience. In 2007, he will also been seen in the movies Fool n Final and Big Brother. In 2008, he will be doing a sequel to his very popular movie Ghayal.
Its funny, but one thing common to all his movies is that they do not have any major dance performances by Sunny. Unfortunately, he has two left feet and he realized that when he tried his hands, or better so feet, at dancing in the movie Jeet. Another noticeable commonality in Sunny’s movie has been his fervor to promote nationalism or patriotism through his movies. He has acted in numerous movies that are particularly on the theme of patriotism such as Border, Jo Bole So Nihaal, 23rd March 1931: Shaheed, India, and The Hero: Love Story of a True Spy.
As sunny the actor excelled with time, Sunny the director was born. Sunny’s first directorial venture was a very soft movie Dillagi. The movie starred Sunny and younger brother and established actor Bobby Deol in reel life roles as brothers. You would be surprised to know that the names chosen for Sunny and Bobby in this film are actually the names of Sunny’s two sons from his wife Pooja – Ranvir and Rajvir. Despite rumors of an apparent affair with Dimple Kapadia and then proximity with Raveena Tandon, Sunny and Pooja still seem to be together.
Sunny loves acting and had proved to be a veteran actor in the action and romantic genre of Hindi cinema. Lately, he has also become much less shy of the media than he used to be. The audience is expecting to enjoy his acting for a long long time to come.