Vinod Khanna (6 October 1946 – 27 April 2017), the father of Akshaye Khanna, started out as a villain in Bollywood before graduating to The Protagonist and Deuteragonist roles. He had trained in wrestling earlier in his life and more or less took over Dharmendra's token gym rat function in the mid-seventies. He alternated between playing brooding but honorable types, and playing Darker and Edgier Anti-Heroes. He often teamed up with Amitabh Bachchan.
At the end of the seventies, he became a follower of a particular guru, or religious leader, and left his wife and children behind to move to America, where the guru had a following. When he came back to India in the mid-eighties, his career had lost a lot of momentum due to his absence. He maintains amicable but distant relations with his sons, actor Akshaye Khanna, and professional twitterer and Deadpan Snarker Rahul Khanna.
Roles of note:
- Achanak: an arthouse film about an injured soldier with psychological issues
- Amar Akbar Anthony: a comedy-adventure about three brothers who are separated in childhood and raised in different religions, before finding each other again and taking down the family nemesis. Also starring Rishi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan.
- Parvarish: with Amitabh and the same director as Amar Akbar Anthony, it has a similar tone to the above but a different plot.
