Padma Shri awardee Tom Alter (67), who was veteran actor and theatre personality, has passed away in Mumbai on September 29, 2017. The Indian actor of American descent, Tom Alter made his big screen debut in 1976 with a small role in Dharmendra-starrer Charas and later went on to work in films like Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Gandhi, Kranti, Bose: The Forgotten Hero and Veer Zara.
But it was his sitcom Zabaan Sambhalke (1993-1997) that made him a household name. Born in Mussoorie in 1950, Alter was a third-generation American in India who studied at Woodstock School in the Himalayas and then briefly at Yale University in the USA, before returning to India in the early 70s.