BOLLYWOOD FILM ACTOR DEV ANAND.

Dev Anand  (1923-2011)

Real Name: Pishaurimal Dev Swaroop Anand.

Best Film.   Guide.with Waheeda Rehman released in 1965.

He Married in 1954 with Mona Singh (Kalpana Kartik).   They secretly got married on the sets of Taxi Driver.

Children. Suneel and Deveena.

Awards. 1958 Best Actor FilmFare. Film Kaala Paani.

1966Best Film Guide featuring him with Waheeda Rehman.

Padma Bhushana in 2001.

Dada Saheb Phalke award in 2002.

NDTV Life Time Award in September 2011.

He died in London on 3 December 2011.

Indian actor, producer and film-maker Dev Anand, who has died aged 88, was the first and longest serving matinee idol of Indian cinema. The pinnacle of his career came with Guide (1965), a film based on RK Narayan's novel, in which Dev played the male lead opposite the classical Indian dancer turned actor Waheeda Rehman. Dev's talented younger brother Vijay directed it. During the golden age of Indian cinema, in the 1950s and 1960s, Dev, along with Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, formed the trio of stars who dominated the silver screen. Dev's urbanity and quirky mannerisms made him especially popular among the young and women.

He was born in undivided India

at Gurdaspur, in the Punjab region. His father, Pishorimal Anand, was a leading lawyer. After graduating from the prestigious Government College, in Lahore, Dev tried and failed to enter the Royal Indian Navy. He finally decided to follow his older brother Chetan's footsteps to join Bombay's film world.

Chetan was the eldest of the three Anand brothers and had established himself as an avant-garde film-maker with his debut film Neecha Nagar, one of the first Indian films to gain international recognition –  shared the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the first Cannes film festival in 1946.

Chetan helped Dev to join the Indian People's Theatre Association where he met many leading figures active in theatre and films. Dev was soon offered the lead role in the Prabhat film company's Hum Ek Hain, 1946 directed by PL Santoshi. But the film that made him a star came two years later from the famous Bombay Talkies studio. This was Shahid Lateef's Ziddi 1948. Kishore Kumar was introduced as a playback singer in this film for Dev, who became his romantic voice for many later films.

In 1949 Dev and Chetan formed their own Navketan Films. Their first production, Afsar (1950), based on Nikolai Gogol's novel The Government Inspector, with Dev and the singing star Suraiya in the lead roles, and directed by Chetan, sank without a trace. But soon the company was placed on a firm footing with the blockbuster crime thriller Baazi 1951.

In the 1950s and 1960s Navketan's Taxi Driver (1954), Nau Do Gyarah 1957), Kalapani 1958, Kala Bazaar 1960 and Tere Ghar Ke Samne 1963 kept Dev at the forefront of Indian cinema. The high watermark of his career as a film star came with Guide, Jewel Thief (1967), Johny Mera Nam 1970 and Tere Mere Sapne 1971 all directed by Vijay.

Dev turned to directing with Prem Pujari 1970, a film about the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965. As a film-maker, his greatest successes came with Haré Raama Haré Krishna 1971, which dealt with the problem of drugs among the young; and Des Pardes 1978, about illegal immigration in the UK.

Dev also had the distinction of introducing many talents and fresh faces to popular Indian cinema, such as Kalpana Kartik, Zeenat Aman and Tina Munim.