Indian origin Star Wars actor Deep Roy: Since becoming a global star, I feel six feet tall – By Khalid Mohamed
deeproy
January 12, 2019
The kiddies’ delight Oompa Loompas— Deep Roy—of Hollywood’s smash hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was in Mumbai to check out the city as the setting of an international movie production which he is currently scripting.
The 61-year-old dimunitive actor has starred in over 75 films and TV series over the decades, including some of H-town’s iconic blockbusters—Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in various roles; three editions of the Star Trek franchise as Keenser the slapstick sidekick, The Planet of the Apes series as a baby gorilla, besides performing daredevil stunts for Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.
Standing at 4’ 4,” in an exclusive to Mumbai Mirror, Roy rewound to his roots in the village of Moga in Punjab. His orthodox Sikh family moved to Nairobi and then London, where he was to study accountancy. His father, a household décor dealer, was horrified when he cut his hair and announced that he wished to be a comedian. “‘Are you joking,’ dad thundered to which I told him just you wait dad, people will be laughing with me, and not at me,” Roy chuckles.
On being sighted by a talent agent at a nightclub show in London, he was on the roll, changing his name from Mohinder Singh Purba to Deep Roy “since it would look short and sweet on films’ credit titles.”
He portrayed an Italian assassin baying for the blood of Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther Strikes Back. Followed by an appearance in German director Wolfgang Petersen’s worldwide hit, The NeverEnding Story, and Roy integrated into the Hollywood mainstream. Today he shuttles between his homes in Sussex and Los Angeles.
Laughing self-deprecatingly, while the lunch crowd darts curious looks in a Chinese restaurant, he says, “Since becoming a global star, if I may say so, I feel six feet tall. My height is immaterial, it’s my heart and mind which count. I’m mobbed in America, Europe and Japan, by kids and unusually enough, tall women. Like there was this French model in Paris, who just wouldn’t let go of me. But you know what? Though I’m Punjabi, I’m often mistaken to be a Mexican or Spaniard.”
He doesn’t pick favourites from his directors Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, JJ Abrams and the late Blake Edwards, adding in the same breath that his collaboration with Tim Burton on the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was “amazing, madly funny, we both treat each other like kids in a playpen.”
Apart from Burton’s Charlie and the Glass Elevator, again adapted from a Roald Dahl book, and the next Star Trek installment, Roy’s into a welter of ad films and a travel food show. “It would be great to film Mumbai’s street khaana,” he exults. “Maybe I’ll return with my crew to focus on the vada pavs, bhel puri, samosas and dosas you can eat for just a few rupees at roadside stalls.”
So, what’s the international project, he’s scripting? “That’s asking,” he says with a poker face. “There are confidentiality clauses. So, I can’t tell.”
Has Roy seen Shah Rukh Khan as a dwarf in Zero? “I’ve heard about it,” he responds, “But the film bombed, didn’t it? Maybe it wouldn’t have if they’d cast me. I’d love to be in the Bollywood movies. The producers here can call me—collect! I’m a Punjab da munda. Should I perform a bhangra for you right now?”
Offer refused, and he makes a funny face, “Okay, you don’t know what you’re missing.”