Sunil Dutt was a hugely popular on the Hindi Service of Radio Ceylon. He moved to acting in Hindi films and got introduced to the film industry in the 1955 film Railway Platform. In 1982 he was appointed as the Sheriff of Mumbai, an apolitical titular position.
Background
Sunil Dutt was born in a Punjabi family on 6 June 1929 in Jhelum, West Punjab, British India (now in Pakistan). When he was five years old, Dutt's father died. When he was 18, the Partition of India began inciting Muslim-Hindu violence across the country. A Muslim named Yakub, who had been friends with Sunil's father, saved their entire family. The family resettled in a small village on the bank of river Yamuna called Mandoli in Yamuna Nagar district of Haryana.
Career
Starting out in radio, Sunil Dutt was a hugely popular on the Hindi Service of Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia. He moved to acting in Hindi films. He shot to the stardom in the 1957 film Mother India. Dutt was one of the major stars of Hindi Cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s and continued to star in many successful films which included Sadhna (1958), Sujata (1959), Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), Khandaan (1965) and Padosan (1967). He collaborated with B.R. Chopra. Later he tried himself as s producer. In 1971 he produced, directed and starred in the big-budget period romantic film Reshma Aur Shera (1971) which was a huge failure at the box office.