[2] During the 1980s and '90s, he was considered to be Britain's highest-profile Asian actor, thanks to his leading roles in the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and television series The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Tandoori Nights (1985–1987) and Little Napoleons (1994).

Jaffrey broke into Indian films with Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977) for which he won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award in 1978.

[7] He became a household name in India with his roles in Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) and Henna (1991), both of which won him nominations for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award.

At that time, his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Fazle Imam of Banur, was the Dewan or Prime Minister of the princely state of Malerkotla.

[16]: 1  His father, Dr Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, was a physician and a civil servant with the Health Services department of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in colonial India.

[18] Jaffrey and his family moved from one medical posting to another within the United Provinces, living in cities like Muzaffarnagar, Lucknow, Mirzapur, Kanpur, Aligarh, Mussoorie, Gorakhpur and Jhansi.

[19] At the local cinemas in Aligarh, he saw many Bollywood movies and became a fan of Motilal, Prithviraj Kapoor, Noor Mohammed Charlie, Fearless Nadia, Kanan Bala and Durga Khote.

After completing his Senior Cambridge there, Jaffrey attended St. George's College, Mussoorie, an all-boys' Roman Catholic school run by Brothers of Saint Patrick.

B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner, Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, Molière's The Bourgeois Gentleman, Christopher Fry's The Firstborn and T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party .

[13] In spring 1956, he approached Bahadur's parents in Delhi for her hand in marriage but they refused because they felt that his financial prospects as an actor did not appear sound.

[16]: 77–78 In 1957, Jaffrey graduated from the Catholic University of America's Department of Speech and Drama and was selected to act in summer stock plays at St. Michael's Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont.

[26][16]: 93  The next day, they travelled to New York City where Bahadur was taken on as a tour guide at the United Nations while Jaffrey undertook public relations work for the Government of India Tourist Office.

[9] In 1958, Jaffrey joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and played the lead in an Off-Broadway production of Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding.

At this time, he met Ismail Merchant who had recently arrived from Bombay to attend the New York University Stern School of Business.

[5] In 1959, James Ivory, then a budding filmmaker from California, approached Jaffrey to provide the narration for his short film about Indian miniature painting, The Sword and the Flute (1959).

The same year, he appeared in a limited run off-Broadway production of Twelfth Night at the Equity Library Theatre in the role of sea captain Antonio.

[29] In 1961, when The Sword and the Flute was shown in New York City, the Jaffreys encouraged Ismail Merchant to attend the screening, where he met Ivory for the first time.

[16]: 106–108  He played the role of the Wigmaker in a three-week run of a theatre version of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon at Fort Lee Playhouse in New Jersey.

From January to May 1962, Jaffrey appeared at Broadway's Ambassador Theatre in a stage adaption of E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India in the role of Professor Godbole.

In summer 1964, Jaffrey along with some actor friends, created a multi-racial touring company called Theater In The Street, giving free performances of Molière's The Doctor Despite Himself in Harlem, Brooklyn and Bedford–Stuyvesant.

Favourable reviews of the play brought an offer from the BBC World Service to write, act and narrate scripts in Urdu and Hindi.

[16]: 150  In order to pay the rent on his one-bedroom flat in Chelsea, Jaffrey took a job as an assistant cashier at Liberty's, a department store selling luxury goods.

[16]: 147 In early 1966, Jaffrey returned to New York City to play the haiku-karate expert Korean police chief Kim Bong Choy in Nathan Weinstein, Mystic, Connecticut that opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

[33] In summer that year he played a role in The Coffee Lover, a comedy starring Alexis Smith that toured Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine.

She is a well-known character actress who appeared in a number of Indian and British films, and had a successful career as a food and travel television personality.

Jaffrey converted to Christianity and attended Sunday service with his wife at St Mary's Church in South Ealing, where his funeral took place.