In his career spanning more than six decades, he did more than 400 films, mostly playing a bumbling comic, often a police constable here or a bartender there, at times even a hero’s sidekick. But that is not how his godfathers in the industry had foreseen his future when he had started his career on a promising note as a child actor in early 1950s. After making his debut in B. R Chopra’s Afsana (1951), he did films with the biggest of banners and directors, including Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan and Guru Dutt before graduating to doing central roles in films like Bhabhi (1957) and Barkha (1959). In fact, so impressed was the erstwhile Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with his performance in the National Award-winning children’s film, Hum Panchhi Ek Daal Ke (1957) that he gifted his walking stick to him. It was sheer bad luck that he lost the lead role in Subodh Mukherjee’s Junglee (1961) which was offered to him before it went to Shammi Kapoor and made him a dancing sensation in the 1960s. The failure of Jagdeep’s subsequent movies forced him to accept what were called ‘side roles’ in the film industry parlance.