Veteran Actor Shelly Desai Passes Away at 90 in Los Angeles

The news of his demise was announced by his family, Deadline reported.

Born December 3, 1935, in Bombay, British India, Desai came to the United States in the 1960s to pursue a master's degree in engineering, but instead chose to pursue the stage. He lived in Chicago, then New York and eventually Los Angeles.

As per Deadline, by the early 1970s his career included appearances Off Broadway and on Broadway (he was among the cast members of Gurney Campbell's very short-lived play Gandhi, directed by Jose Quintero, a production that opened and closed on the same night in October, 1970). He would return to Broadway in 1981's A Talent For Murder, starring Claudette Colbert and Ryan's Hope's Nancy Addison.

Screen credits from the era include a small role in Brian De Palma's 1974 rock and roll cult musical Phantom of the Paradise.

Over the next five decades, Desai would build a consistent, prolific character-acting career with dozens of appearances - many of them single episodes - in such series as St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, Sledge Hammer!, Moonlighting, thirtysomething, ER, Friends, NYPD Blue, Ugly Betty, Baskets and History of the World: Part II.

Desai lent his voice to 10 episodes of the 1990s children's show Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? and appeared as multiple characters in three episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. In a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled "Data's Day," he portrayed V'Sal, a blue-skinned Bolian barber.

Desai had also portrayed key roles in Thelma & Louise (1991), Toys (1992), Clifford (1994), Midnight Clear (2006) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015), among others.

He is survived by wife Phyllis, stepdaughters April and Dawn and grandchildren Sean, Sofia and Dylan.

- ANI