ਬੀ. ਐਨ. ਸ਼ਰਮਾਬੀ. ਐਨ. ਸ਼ਰਮਾ

ਬੀ. ਐਨ. ਸ਼ਰਮਾ, ਪੂਰਾ ਨਾਂ ਭੋਲਾ ਨਾਥ ਸ਼ਰਮਾ, ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਫ਼ਿਲਮ ਅਤੇ ਟੈਲੀਵਿਜ਼ਨ ਦੇ ਸੀਨੀਅਰ ਅਦਾਕਾਰ ਹਨ, ਜੋ ਆਪਣੀ ਹਾਸਰਸ ਸਮੇਂ ਦੀ ਪਕੜ, ਬੋਲਦੇ ਚਿਹਰੇ ਅਤੇ ਸਟੀਕ ਡਾਇਲਾਗ ਅਦਾਇਗੀ ਲਈ ਪਿਆਰੇ ਜਾਂਦੇ ਹਨ। ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੇ 1985 ਵਿੱਚ ਜਲੰਧਰ ਦੂਰਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਤੋਂ ਸ਼ੁਰੂਆਤ ਕੀਤੀ, ਕਰੀਬ 25 ਸਾਲ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਿਪਾਹੀ ਵਜੋਂ ਸੇਵਾ ਕਰਦੇ ਹੋਏ ਨਾਲ ਨਾਲ ਅਦਾਕਾਰੀ ਕੀਤੀ, ਅਤੇ ਅੱਗੇ ਜਾ ਕੇ 70 ਤੋਂ ਵੱਧ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਫ਼ਿਲਮਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਕੰਮ ਕੀਤਾ। ਦਰਸ਼ਕ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਜੱਟ ਅਤੇ ਜੂਲੀਅਟ ਫ਼ਿਲਮਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਸ਼ੈਂਪੀ ਡਾ ਡੈਡੀ ਅਤੇ ਕੈਰੀ ਓਨ ਜੱਟਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਇੰਸਪੈਕਟਰ ਸਿਕੰਦਰ ਸਿੰਘ ਟਿਵਾਣਾ ਵਜੋਂ ਸਭ ਤੋਂ ਵੱਧ ਜਾਣਦੇ ਹਨ।

A Delhi upbringing and a move to Chandigarh

Sharma was born into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family with roots in Gujranwala, a family that crossed into India during the Partition of 1947. He was brought up in Delhi, where his parents hoped he would become an engineer. Acting pulled him the other way from childhood: he later recalled buying a flute from a balloon seller before he had even started school, and only realising years afterwards that the pull he felt was towards art itself.

His father was strict, and the disagreement over his future came to a head while Sharma was studying for his degree. In 1972 he left home and moved to Chandigarh, where he stayed with an uncle. There he joined the Punjab Police as a constable, a uniform he would wear for about 25 years, while theatre gave him the stage his family home had not. It was an unusual double life: a policeman by day building, role by role, one of the longest comedy careers in Punjabi entertainment.

How did a police constable become a Punjabi comedy star?

The screen break came in Jalandhar. In 1985, Jalandhar Doordarshan cast him in a negative role in the Punjabi soap Jeb Katre, which means Pocket Pickers. The part was small and villainous, but viewers and producers noticed him, and Sharma himself has always spoken of Jalandhar with special affection as the city that started everything. Television, not cinema, was his first school, and it taught him the timing and restraint that later made his film comedy work.

His first film, Vaisakhi in 1987, was a hit, and it proved a constable could hold his own on the big screen. Through his years in uniform he completed some 40 to 45 films alongside his police duties, a workload few serving officers anywhere have matched. Directors came to prize the perfection he brought to every scene, and when he finally left the force, acting was no longer the side job. It was the career.

The Jaspal Bhatti years

A defining partnership of his television years was with the satirist Jaspal Bhatti. Sharma appeared in Bhatti's hit series Flop Show in 1989 and went on to work with him in Ulta Pulta and Full Tension, usually playing negative characters loaded with comedy. Bhatti's shows mocked everyday corruption and bureaucracy in short, sharp sketches, and they made Sharma a familiar face across Punjab years before the modern Punjabi film boom arrived.

The partnership carried into cinema with Mahaul Theek Hai in 1999, Bhatti's anti corruption comedy film, where Sharma played Billu Bakra, a name audiences kept calling him long afterwards. Looking back on that period, he also used his platform to argue that the Punjab government should support Punjabi cinema the way it supports sport, a cause he raised in interviews while the industry was still small.

Shampy Da Daddy, Inspector Tiwana and the blockbuster years

The new wave of Punjabi cinema made him a household name all over again. In 2012 he played Gunoshan Singh Chawla, better remembered as Shampy Da Daddy, the father of Shampy, in Jatt and Juliet, and in the same year he played Inspector Sikandar Singh Tiwana in Carry On Jatta. Both films were blockbusters, both characters stuck, and Sharma returned to them across the sequels: Jatt and Juliet 2 in 2013 and Jatt and Juliet 3 in 2024, and the Carry On Jatta sequels in 2018 and 2023, where his character had become the beloved Bansal.

Around those twin pillars he built one of the busiest supporting careers in the industry, moving between broad comedy and quieter drama. His credits include Ardaas in 2016, where he played Subedar Saab, Judge Singh LLB, Arjan, Marriage Da Garriage, Bhaji in Problem, Manje Bistre, Golak Bugni Bank Te Batua, Rabb Da Radio 2, Muklawa and Ardab Mutiyaran, and more recently Gol Gappe and Sardaar Ji 3. Few Punjabi releases of the last two decades feel complete without his face somewhere in the frame.

Honours, family and legacy

His work has been honoured with the Best Actor in a Comic Role award at the PTC Punjabi Film Awards, recognition for a style built on precision rather than noise: a pause held a beat longer, a line thrown away so casually that the laugh arrives a second later and stays longer. At home he is a family man, married with four children, three sons who are triplets and a daughter.

Sharma's legacy is the bridge he built between two eras of Punjabi entertainment. He learnt his craft on Doordarshan serials and Jaspal Bhatti satire, carried it through the lean years of Punjabi cinema while wearing a police uniform, and was still standing centre frame when the Jatt and Juliet and Carry On Jatta years turned Punjabi comedy into a global business. For younger comic actors he remains the proof that a supporting role, played perfectly, can outlive the film around it.