Pankaj Tripathi

Pankaj Tripathi grew up in a farming family in Bihar and came to acting late and sideways, waiting tables and doing theatre in Patna before drama school and a long apprenticeship in tiny roles. The breakthrough, when it came, was less a single film than a slow national realisation that he was quietly stealing every scene he appeared in.

Gangs of Wasseypur got him noticed; the web series Mirzapur made him a genuine phenomenon as the soft-spoken crime patriarch; and Newton, Stree and Ludo showed the comic range. His trick is stillness, the sense that his characters know something everyone else in the frame has missed.

Married since long before the fame, to Mridula, he carries the success with a groundedness the industry finds novel. He is a warm, willing subject when the paparazzi find him, ours included.

Everything below is from our own cameras.

More on Pankaj Tripathi: en.wikipedia.org