Kumar Pallana obituary

Some film-makers have lucky-mascot actors who are occasionally to be spotted in small roles in their movies – for instance Dick Miller in the work of Joe Dante or Jack Nance returning repeatedly to David Lynch. It's a film geeks' in-joke, a cinephiles' game of Where's Wally? For Wes Anderson, one of the most original US film-makers to emerge in the last 20 years, that position was filled on four occasions by the delightful and guileless Kumar Pallana, who has died aged 94. Pallana appeared in Anderson's first three, reputation-forging movies. He played the useless safecracker Kumar in the director's 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket ("Man, I blew it," he sighs memorably as the police close in. "I blew it, man.") He was the school caretaker Mr Littlejeans in Rushmore (1998), Anderson's masterpiece. And he took his most prominent role as Pagoda, the sidekick-cum-butler to the feckless patriarch played by Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). He turned up again in Anderson's fifth film, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), set in India. Pallana was more than just a benevolent presence drafted in to boost the eccentricity quota of those pictures. He had his own varied and colourful life and career long before Anderson was born. Nor was Anderson the first to spot his screen potential: he had already appeared in bit parts in the James Stewart western Broken Arrow (1950) and in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952), and appeared as Kumar of India – the name of his off-screen act – on US television in the children's series The Mickey Mouse Club (1956) and Captain Kangaroo (1961). "Each of us has our own destiny," he told the Dallas Morning News in 2004. "Mine is to be an actor." He was born in India. His father was a car salesman and the family had a comfortable life until falling on hard times during the country's fight for independence. Pallana trained as a gymnast and juggler, and performed as a child in Indian communities across Africa; he also studied yoga. He went to the US in 1946 and found small acting roles. To support his wife and two children, he took work as a juggler and plate-spinner in nightclubs before settling in 1960 in Dallas. There he opened a yoga studio. His son Dipak (who has also appeared in Anderson's films) later opened a coffee shop, the Cosmic Cup, on the studio's ground floor. Anderson attended the Cosmic Cup's regular chess nights, with his co-writer, Owen Wilson (best known as an actor). "They just finished college, the both of them," Pallana recalled. "They said, 'We are writing.' They wanted to shoot … Bottle Rocket. And I didn't pay much attention to what kind of movie it was. They go to Los Angeles and finally they come and they say, 'Yeah, we are shooting the movie. And here is your part.'" It was precisely that nonplussed charm that came through on screen; Pallana was such an ingenuous presence that it seemed possible he might turn to camera and break the fourth wall at any moment. His work with Anderson led to more screen roles. Pallana appeared in Steven Spielberg's sentimental comedy The Terminal (2004), John Turturro's musical Romance and Cigarettes (2005) and the science-fiction drama Another Earth (2011). But he was busy with yoga classes and was not exactly waiting for the next script to drop through the letterbox. "Whatever comes, I take it," he said. "I'm an old guy. I don't hustle and I don't bustle. So sometimes you're behind, but that's okay. Your peace of mind is more important. I have seen the people who hustle and bustle, and they are already gone, at a young age. They could have enjoyed life." He is survived by his son and by his daughter, Sandhya. • Kumar Pallana, actor and yoga teacher, born 23 December 1918; died 10 October 2013