Tom Alter, an Indian-born character actor of American descent who spent his career playing Westerners in Bollywood films, died on Sept. 29 at his home in Mumbai. He was 67.

His daughter, Afshaan Alter Burtram, said the cause was squamous cell carcinoma, a skin cancer.

With light skin, blue eyes and blond hair, which later turned bright white, Mr. Alter was an incongruous figure in Bollywood. But he spoke Hindi and Urdu fluently, making him a natural fit for roles like slick diplomats, British colonials, priests and police officers.

“You name it, I’ve played them all,” he told The New York Times in 1989.

He appeared in more than 300 films and a handful of television shows and plays. He was Lord Mountbatten in “Sardar,” a 1993 film about Sardar Patel, the freedom fighter who unified India as the country broke away from British colonization. In Satyajit Ray’s 1977 “Shatranj Ke Khiladi” (“The Chess Players”), he was the introspective Captain Weston, who, with his love for Urdu poetry, sympathizes with the very rulers of India he is faced with overthrowing as the confidential assistant to a general played by Richard Attenborough.