Johnny Lever, born John Prakash Rao Janumala on 14 August 1957, is an Indian actor and comedian known for his work in Hindi cinema and widely regarded as one of the greatest comedians in Indian cinema. He began his career in 1984 and has acted in more than 300 Hindi films. He has been nominated 13 times for the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Comic Role and has won it twice, for Deewana Mastana (1997) and Dulhe Raja (1998).
He was born into a Telugu Christian family in Prakasam, Andhra Pradesh. His father worked as an operator at a Hindustan Unilever plant, where Lever also worked as a labourer for six years. He grew up in the King’s Circle area of Matunga in Mumbai and is the eldest of three sisters and two brothers, including the younger brother Jimmy Moses, who is also a comedian. He studied until the seventh grade at the Andhra Education Society English High School and left because of his family’s financial problems. He took odd jobs, including selling pens on the streets of Mumbai while mimicking famous film stars and dancing to their songs, and spent some early years in Yakutpura in Hyderabad, where he learned his style of comedy.
At a Hindustan Unilever function he mimicked senior officers, and from then on his colleagues called him “Johnny Lever”; when he joined films he kept it as his screen name. He started performing stand-up in musical shows, including Tabassum Hit Parade, and joined the group of the composer duo Kalyanji–Anandji. He is one of the first stand-up comedians in India and is widely regarded as a pioneer of the profession. Even before he joined the company he was giving stage performances, and he quit Hindustan Unilever in 1981 because of growing absenteeism and good earnings from shows. One of his first big tours was with Amitabh Bachchan in 1982.
At one show the veteran actor Sunil Dutt noticed his talent and offered him his first film, Dard Ka Rishta. He also recorded a comedy cassette, Hasi Ke Hangame, which made him known at home through audio, and did commercials for Kachua Chhap incense, directed by Shekhar Kapur. In 1986 he performed as a filler at the charity show Hope 86 in front of members of the film industry, which led the producer Gul Anand to offer him Jalwa, opposite Naseeruddin Shah.
His first break was in Tum Par Hum Qurban, in which Baby Tabassum launched her son Hoshang Govil, and then Dard Ka Rishta. He went on to Jalwa and Hero Hiralal with Naseeruddin Shah, and his first major success came in the 1990s with Baazigar, directed by Abbas–Mustan, in which he played Babulal; he is also remembered for characters such as “Chotta Chattri” and “Aslam Bhai”. He kept doing live shows, and one of his best-remembered was an impersonation of Michael Jackson at the 1999 Filmfare Awards.
He acted in a Tulu film, Rang, and a Kannada film, Gara, and his first Tamil film was Anbirkku Alavillai (2011). On television he first appeared in the sitcom Zabaan Sambhalke in 1993 as Johnny Utolandand and had his own show, Johny Aala Re, on Zee TV. He was a judge on the stand-up show Comedy Circus and joined the cast of Partners in 2017 as Commissioner Googol Chatterjee. He is president of the Mimicry Artist Association Mumbai and has performed thousands of live shows around the world.
He married Sujatha Lever in 1984 and they have two children, Jamie and Jessy; his daughter Jamie Lever is an actress. He is a Christian and has said that a health scare involving his son changed his life and led him towards preaching. His road from a street pen-seller to a Filmfare winner is one of the best-known comic success stories in Hindi films.
Featured image: Johnny Lever, comedian and actor (file photo, 2010). Photo by CreativoCamaal of Lens Naayak Photography, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
