Dalip Tahil

Dalip Tahil
Tahil at French Film Festival Mumbai 2010
Born	(1952-10-30) 30 October 1952 (age 64) Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Actor

Dalip Tahil (born 30 October 1952, in Agra) is an Indian film, television and theatre actor. He did his schooling from the elite Sherwood College in Nainital, India. After attending Aligarh Muslim University for a year, he graduated from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai.

Dalip Tahil began to appear on stage while at Sherwood College, Nainital, at the age of 10. Dalip's participation over the years in choir, elocution competitions, Nativity plays, and formal and informal concerts gave him a platform to be cast in principal parts which won him, during his senior years at school, the prestigious Kendall Cup for the best actor two years in succession, first as Joseph in the play My Three Angels and again as Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth. He was declared the best actor for a record third time in 1969, his final year at Sherwood College.

Dalip moved with his family to Mumbai in 1968, joined the Theatre Group Bombay, and trained under its directors Alyque and Pearl Padamsee. He appeared in some of its major productions, such as John the Baptist and Jesus'in Godspell (India's first English theatre musical, directed by Pearl Padamsee), Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Street Car Named Desire directed by Alyque Padamsee.

He played Galy Gay, in Amal Alana's production of Bhertolt Brecht's Man Is a Man.

He is internationally known for starring as Madan Kumar in the A.R Rahman theatre musical Bombay Dreams which he performed in over 500 shows through 2002, at the Appollo Theatre in London.

Director Shyam Benegal noticed Dalip and offered him a part in his first feature film Ankur in 1974. In 1980 Ramesh Sippy offered him the role of a villain in his epic production Shaan. This was followed by a cameo in Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi in 1982.