In her cotton saris with her make-up made to look like
dark rings around her eyes Nirupa Roy embodied the 'every
mother' of 70s Hindi popular cinema. Her portrayal of the
mother was so iconic that actress to this day refer to a 'Nirupa
Roy' type character when attempting to give an explanation
of the type of part they are playing in a film.
In the 70s and 80s Amitabh
Bachchan's, angry young man was her and her son alone,
or so it seemed. If one was asked who the angry young man's
mother was, one could only say Nirupa Roy. She played Amitabh's
mother in seven films.
Nirupa Roy began her film career in the 1940s and became
famous portraying goddess in mythologicals. One of her most
famous roles of the period was as Satyavan Savitri in a film
of the same name. It is interesting in light of her later
career that the character, a goddess from the Mahabharata
is both a queen and long suffering mother.
