Photo: Bollywood Hungama / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Kharbanda is the kind of actor I quietly trust. Born in 1944 in what is now Pakistan, he built a career across more than half a century of Indian cinema, immortalised as the villain Shakaal in Shaan yet just as comfortable in the demanding world of parallel cinema. What impresses me is the range: a theatre-trained craftsman who moved fluidly between art-house gravity and mainstream spectacle. There is an educated, lived-in intelligence to performers like him, the sort whose mere presence steadies a film. I rate that durability far above flash; longevity in cinema is its own quiet kind of greatness, and he has it.
Overview
Kulbhushan Kharbanda (born 21 October 1944) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi and Punjabi films. He is best known for his role as the antagonist Shakaal in Shaan (1980), Starting off with the Delhi-based theatre group borkh in 1974. He worked in several parallel cinema films before working in the mainstream Hindi film industry.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Kulbhushan Kharbanda
- Name (Japanese)
- クルブーシャン・カールバンダー
- Reading
- くるぶーしゃん・かーるばんだー
- Born
- October 21, 1944 (age 81)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Libra / Monkey
- Origin
- Hasan Abdal, Attock District, Pakistan
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- stage actor / film actor / television actor / actor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Aligarh Muslim University
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Stage actor — see all → · Film actor — see all → · More people from Pakistan →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.