Kabir Bedi reveals Bankruptcy was “Very Humiliating”

Kabir Bedi has opened up on a “traumatic” time in his life when he went bankrupt, calling it “very humiliating”.

The actor is a prominent name within Bollywood but he has also featured in Hollywood as well as Western films like Octopussy.

However, it has not always been smooth sailing for Kabir.

He spoke about going bankrupt as well as his son’s tragic suicide.

Kabir said: “I went through traumatic experiences with my son’s suicide, with my bankruptcy in Hollywood.

“It’s very humiliating for a celebrity to be bankrupted.

“But you have to find ways of rising and resurrecting yourself.

“All through my life, I’ve reinvented myself.”

He went on to say that his spirituality helped him to overcome difficult times.

“A lot of the meditation I learned in my you, a lot of the spiritual underpinnings my parents gave me through their remarkable traditions of Sikhism and Buddhism, and my own inner sense of self gave me the strength to say, ‘no, I will fight back’.”

On Hollywood, Kabir Bedi said he “had no qualms about taking a white actor, painting him brown and giving him the role that you were best for”.

On how he tackled it, Kabir said: “I adapted to this by saying, ‘Okay, I will simply play the foreigner in Hollywood. I don’t restrict myself to Asian or Indian’.

“And therefore, the roles that I got, one of the huge roles that I got with Michael Caine in a film called Ashanti, I played a Tuareg tribesman.”

Kabir also spoke about working as an Indian man in Octopussy.

“It was only in Octopussy, the Bond film where I actually played an Indian.

“Any actor who plays any role of any interest in a Bond film becomes a person of great interest to hundreds of millions of Bond fans around the world.

“You become part of the Bond family and that’s a very special experience.”

“So while the hero might be preferable, being a Bond villain is no less joyous, glamorous, or no less exciting.”

Kabir Bedi is coming off the release of his autobiography Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor.

In the book, he talks about his work and personal life.

He also discussed his relationship with actress Parveen Babi. She reportedly suffered from mental illness and passed away in 2005 due to organ failure.

Writing about her death, Kabir Bedi said:

“In the end, I learned how Parveen had died.

“Her body was found in her Juhu flat four days after she died, a leg rotted by gangrene, a wheelchair by her bed.

“A lonely and tragic end of a star who had once been the fantasy of millions.

“Three men who had known and loved her – Mahesh, Danny and I – came for her funeral at the Muslim cemetery in Juhu.

“It was a solemn burial with Islamic rites and chants. We carried her body with relatives to a dimly lit grave.

“I felt for all she had suffered with a sorrow that came from my depths.

“Each of us had known her in ways not many knew. Each of us had loved her as only each one knew.”