Johny Lever

Three hundred films is the headline number and the right place to begin. Born John Prakash Rao Janumala in Andhra Pradesh in 1957, Johny Lever began his film career in 1984 and has since appeared in more than three hundred Hindi pictures. For roughly thirty years he was the comic relief that Bollywood producers treated as structurally necessary, the man booked to hold ten minutes of a three-hour film together on his own.

What he does is voice work as much as physical comedy. Lever built his act on mimicry, and his screen characters are usually a voice first: an accent, a stammer, a speed of delivery, a catchphrase, and then a name hung on it afterwards. Col. Almeida in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is a whole performance assembled out of a single vocal tic. Babu Lal in Baazigar, Inspector Parab in Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Munnabhai in Phir Hera Pheri, Pappu Passport in Judwaa 2: the character names alone tell you the register, and he plays them at a volume that would sink a subtler actor.

He has thirteen Filmfare nominations for best comic performance and won it twice, for Deewana Mastana and Dulhe Raja, neither of which is among the credits listed here. The striking thing about the late career is that it never tapered. He is in Golmaal Again in 2017, Housefull 4 in 2019, Housefull 5 in 2025 and films dated 2026. Very few comic actors in any film industry get a four-decade run in the same job.