Birthday Greetings to veteran bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha who turned 72 today.

An out-and-out commercial star, Shatrughan Sinha excelled in roles both as the hero as well as the villain. Also referred to as the Bihari Babu and Shotgun, he is known for his trademark dialogue delivery.

Shatrughan Sinha was born as Shatrughan Prasad Sinha on December 9, 1945 in Patna, Bihar in a Kayastha family to Bhubaneswar Prasad Sinha and Shyama Devi Sinha. He was educated at Patna Science College. He is also an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

His first acting opportunity was playing a Pakistani military officer in Dev Anand’s Prem Pujari (1970), although his big screen debut came with Mohan Sehgal’s Sajan, which released a year earlier — he played a bit role as a cop. What worked for him was his booming voice that instantly connected with the ’70s audience. His “Ghaslet, bachche ghaslet. Mitti ka tel…” dialogue from Mere Apne (1971) is epic.

After reinventing himself as a hero, he did well in multi-starrers with Amitabh Bachchan, such as Shaan, Naseeb and Dostana.
Call him a hero or a villain; you can’t keep Shatrughan Sinha out of the frame. Watching his stylised acting, over the years, one had almost forgotten that Sinha was a trained actor from the Film and Television Institute of India. Bereft of traditional qualities of a hero, Sinha emerged as a complete original at a time when the industry was manufacturing clones of Dilip Kumar in different shapes and sizes. He would break a dialogue in a way that would be considered blasphemous by the conservatives but would invariably draw whistles. For all the arrogance that we associate with the star, the man knew his limitations as he went on to admit that. “I followed the dictum if you can’t be the best, be different.”

In politics too, he set a record as the first film star from India to be sworn-in as a Cabinet Minister.