an encounter with his pursuers." He called the final sequence in the film in which the soldier-turned-gangster is cornered by six or seven men and is shot "the most moving scene" he had ever played. Hiralal recollected in an interview in the 1960s that it was with his role in Faisla (1947) opposite Kanan Devi that he was "able to form a certain concept of villainy which served me well later when I began to play the villain in most of my pictures." In Chunder's Teen Bhai (1955), he "played a villain" opposite Pahari Sanyal, Nazir Hussain and Bharat Bhushan's characters. Hiralal's association with the New Theatres, however, ended in 1949, when he moved to Bombay (now Mumbai). In Bombay, his first film Badal (1951), in which he played a " villainous sardar whose greed for money is his undoing", was received well. In Kishore Sahu's Sapna (1952), he played an outlaw who kidnaps the heroine played by Bina Rai. In K. Amarnath's Mehbooba (1954), he played a dacoit. In G. P. Sippy's Chandrakanta (1956), he played "a mad conqueror who wanted his people to worship him as a living God." Hiralal studied the lives of Nero and a few Egyptian Pharaohs in preparation for the role. He starred in Leader (1964) as a "fanatic killer who is out to exterminate a famous man." Hiralal rated his performance in the 1948 film Jhoothi Kasmein his best, during an interview with the Indian Express in 1965. He added that Swayamsiddha (1947) and Anjangarh (1948) were films that gave him "inspiration and strength". Hiralal credited filmmakers Birendranath Sircar and Hemachandra Chunder for having taught him to become a character actor, Roop K. Shorey for the "laugh" and "weep without sobbing" in films. He recalled Amarnath "built him up as a fighter" with his film Sarkar (1951). Hiralal was a fan of American actors John Barrymore and Paul Muni. Personal life Hiralal was born into a Punjabi family on 14 March 1909 (or 1910) in Lahore, then a city in the Punjab Province of British India (in present-day Pakistan). He was the second of two children of Anuradha and harish, a businessman. Hiralal completed his education in Lahore and grew up watching and being influenced by the character of Ravana in the Ramlila plays. Hiralal married Darparani in 1945 and had five sons and a daughter with her. The sons were Krishna, Kamal,