Do they still call it that?
What?
“We want a child of yours!”
I was shocked to hear that, here.
I a mi.
It’s delicate to be asked by a single woman, to be asked by hundreds of people… what a responsibility! I ran out.
D’on?
From El Corte Ingl is from Preciados, through another door. They saw me and I jumped on the roofs of a few cars.
were you scared
I was afraid to die. I was reported by the owners of the cars I dented. El Corte Inglés paid for it, very kindly.
You were too famous.
And almost half a century later I am still Sandokan to millions of people.
He brought his physical presence to it.
Physicality counts. And the interpretation.
That jump crossing with the tiger…
I really jumped, with the dagger. Then he rode a leaping tiger. And so it seemed that I was cutting his belly.
And, pam!, the tiger fell dead.
good memory I would like to pay tribute in some way to the Sandokan series in 2026, when it will be fifty years old.
How did he become the protagonist?
I was acting in Bollywood films and they claimed me from Italy: I agreed to shoot Sandokan … and the series succeeded.
What do you remember about your days in Italy?
I had a fling with my partner, Parveen, a brilliant Bollywood actress. My girlfriend today is a different Parveen.
What does “different” mean?
That Parveen was jealous. Having dinner with Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian danced with me and made innuendos. And Parveen, furious, left. I left with her.
He lost an affair with Lollobrigida.
But in Italy I dealt with Audrey Hepburn and Monica Vitti, actresses I idolized, and with Franco Zeffirelli, Bernardo Bertolucci and Federico Fellini, directors I admired.
How did you become an actor?
Probably because at eighteen I felt abandoned.
Who abandoned him?
My mother was ordained as a Buddhist nun. Dismayed, I asked him why: “The apple falls from the tree no one knows when”, he told me. And I was all alone.
And his father?
My father, Indian, who was communist and anti-colonialist…
Com Sandokan: anti-colonialist.
Well, my father, like Sandokan, also fell in love with an English woman and married her: my mother.
What did you learn from your parents?
“Don’t be conventional, be different!”, my father kept telling me. And he was: he drifted from communist to spiritual guru.
That is, from one faith to another faith.
He called himself Baba Bedi, and he healed people.
And you, son of a guru and a nun…
I was studying business management, but I needed to express myself: I wanted to direct films… and in the end my voice and my physique pushed me to act.
And until today, right?
Yes. Being an actor is a half-emotional half-intellectual game, and I’ve done well.
Did he continue to treat his mother?
Yes, and I forgave her and loved her. And I met his teacher, the Dalai Lama.
Ask the Dalai Lama about his language in front of that boy.
The Dalai Lama is mischievous, and the gesture has traditional roots. Western bias makes you see in this gesture what is not there.
What other roles do you remember fondly, apart from Sandokan?
I had fun being the villain who fights James Bond (Roger Moore) on a plane in the final scene of Octopussy. We recorded the scene on three continents.
The house is big!
I enjoyed working on episodes of Magnum, Dinastia, El coche fantástico, Se ha escrito un crimen…
Does being an actor still bring you happiness?
An enormous professional happiness… tempered by painful family misfortunes.
Which?
I’ve been through three divorces, and that’s always painful, but the worst was the suicide of my first son, Siddharta.
What happened?
Young, handsome, about to become a brilliant computer engineer, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I got him the best specialists. Siddharta felt a torturous void and suffered… “I’m not interested in life without feeling normal”, he confessed to me.
And how did you feel afterwards?
very guilty I was little with my children, because of work. The wound has healed, but I will always feel the scar.
