Forever grateful to director of Sandokan: Kabir Bedi

Actor Kabir Bedi, whose 1976 Italian TV series Sandokan will soon be launched in India with a Hindi dubbed version and an original English subtitled show, says he will forever be grateful to its director Sergio Sollima, who is no longer alive.

Kabir paid a tribute to Sollima at the Rome Fiction TV Festival earlier this year, and he was honoured by the delegates too. The 69-year-old shared that it was emotional for him to pay tribute to Sollima.

“The festival paid homage to the late director of Sandokan'and its director Sergio Sollima. It was emotional to pay tribute to the man that changed my life forever, he was the one who cast me as Sandokan.

I will be forever grateful to him. It was very emotional for me to see the cast together again after so many years,” Kabir said in a statement. Sandokan is a six-part Italian television series which is based upon the novels of Emilio Salgari.

Kabir has worked in a number of foreign projects such as his villainous role as Gobinda in the 1983 James Bond film “Octopussy”, “The Beast of War” -- a film on the Russian war in Afghanistan, directed by Kevin Reynolds, Italian film ‘Andata Ritorno’; as well as American TV shows such as Dynasty, Knight Rider and Highlander The Series, among others.