Nassar & Om Puri Movies Together List — 3 Films

The shape of the work

The 1990s belonged to Chachi 420; the 2010s to Ghazi. Nassar acted in every film; Om Puri acted in all of them.

Partnership facts

• Nassar and Om Puri first shared screen space in 'Chachi 420' (1997) because Kamal Haasan specifically wanted two powerhouse character actors who could hold their own in a comedy about a man pretending to be a grandmother. Haasan cast them as the suspicious father-in-law and the family doctor — roles that required both deadpan and chaos.
• In 'Chachi 420', Om Puri played the straight-laced doctor while Nassar played the paranoid father-in-law. Puri set a slow, deliberate pace in their scenes together, which forced Nassar to speed up his reactions — creating a comic rhythm where one man's calm made the other's panic funnier.
• Nassar has said in interviews that Om Puri was the only co-star who would call him at 2 AM to discuss a single line reading from a scene they shot weeks earlier. They never became close friends, but they had a mutual respect that Nassar called 'professional obsession'.
• Their two 2017 films — 'The Ghazi Attack' and 'Ghazi' — are actually the same story (the 1971 Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi sinking). Both actors were cast in different productions about the same real event, released months apart. This created a rare situation where two veteran actors essentially played rival versions of the same historical figures in competing films.
• Nassar once said about Om Puri: 'He didn't act with you. He acted at you. Every scene with him felt like a test — and if you passed, you became a better actor.' He said this in a 2018 interview after Puri's death.