Seth was born in New Delhi, India,(some say Patna} the son of a professor of biochemistry at Patna University. He was educated at The Doon School, further doing graduation in History at St Stephen's College,honing his theatrical skills at the Shakespeare society before moving on to UK for further training. A native of New Delhi, India, British character actor of theater and film Roshan Seth honed the skills he learned at London's Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in British repertory theater.

His first break came in Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which toured in 1972. Seth entered feature films in Richard Lester's Juggernaut (1974), but because subsequent filmmakers only wanted Seth for ethnic roles, his career abruptly stalled.

Discouraged, he abandoned acting and returned to India, where he worked as an editor and journalist until the early '80s, when Richard Attenborough asked Seth to play Pandit Nehru in Gandhi (1982). (He also played Nehru in the March 2007 drama-documentary 'The Last Days of the Raj' broadcast on British TV Channel 4 on 12 March 2007).

Shortly thereafter, Seth essayed Indian author Victor Mehta and toured the globe in playwright David Hare's biography "A Map of the World". After the play's Broadway run, Seth's movie career took off, with roles in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and David Lean's A Passage to India (1984). Seth's subsequent film credits include Mississippi Masala (1992), Street Fighter (1994), and The Journey (1997).

He recently came back into main stream Indian commercial cinema with his crisp role in the Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Guru.

Filmography

Family Background

Mr. Roshan Seth is of a mixed ancestry, his father was from Lahore and his mother was from Bihar, she herself being born of a White mother from England and a U.K. returned muslim barrister called Syed Khilafat Hussain, who hailed from a family of landlords of a village called Orain(Uren), in Lakhisarai District of Bihar.

References

External links

• Roshan Seth at the Internet Movie Database