Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Zia Mohyeddin


Zia Mohyeddin was born in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) into a family of scholars and aesthetes. He took off for Australia after his degree in philosphy from where his faem started. He went on to the famed Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1953 and soon began a successful career on the boards.

Mr Mohyeddin starred in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and made his West End debut playing Dr Aziz in EM Forster’s Passage to India. Mr Mohyeddin was a smash on Broadway, too. Stints on the BBC and ITV followed. At the peak of his career, he decided to move back home.

He returned to Pakistan in the 1960s, hosting the Zia Mohyeddin show on PTV. He set up the PIA Arts and Dance Academy the following decade. The arts academy toured the world and performed at the Madison Square Garden and for Queen Elizabeth II. When Gen Ziaul Haq effectively banned the arts in the 1980s, He once again, left for London.

In February 2005 he was invited by President Pervez Musharraf to act as Chairman of the new National Academy of Performing Arts in Karachi.

Zia Mohyeddin was born in Pakistan but trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London from 1953-1956.

Following important roles in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Julius Caesar" in 1957, he made his West End debut with "A Passage to India" in 1960.

He subsequently made an auspicious film debut in the classic film Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and continued on the BBC as well in a couple of series. Other epic films followed with supporting roles in Behold a Pale Horse (1964) and Khartoum (1966).

He returned to Pakistan at the request of the Bhutto regime in the late 60s and set up the PIA Arts and Dance Academy, which received critical merit for its classical as well as folk dances and music.

Highly critical of the political regime, he returned to England within a few years and resumed his career there, appearing in the highly touted miniseries "The Jewel in the Crown" (1984), among others.

He has since traveled the world promoting his Urdu poetry and prose recitations to international acclaim.

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