It was a nostalgic moment for Bollywood actor Anupam Kher when he signed papers Wednesday to set up an acting institute in the city where he took his first professional lessons in acting.

"This is a very emotional moment for me. I started my journey from this city after coming from Shimla. I think this is the right time for me to pay back to the city," Kher told reporters here as he signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Chandigarh administration for setting up the institute in May this year.

Kher did his acting course at the Department of Indian Theatre at Panjab University here in the 1960s.

Hailing from the hill station town of Shimla, 120 km from here, his other connection to this city is that his wife Kirron Kher, herself an acclaimed film actor and theatre personality, is from Chandigarh.

"I thank the Chandigarh administration for taking steps to set up the Chandigarh Acting Institute (CAI). People in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh have immense talent in acting and will no longer have to go to Mumbai to learn acting," Kher said.

His institute, Actor Prepares, will run acting courses from the Central Crafts Institute in Sector 11. The government infrastructure would be lent out to CAI for short acting courses.

"I can assure you that the acting school here will be of international standard. Teachers will come from Mumbai and abroad. The courses would be chosen as per needs of modern cinema," the actor announced.

He said that these days, marketing themselves was important for actors and this would also be taught to the students.

The MoU for the CAI was signed between Kher's institute and the Society for Tourism and Entertainment Promotion in Chandigarh, its CEO and director Vivek Atray announced.

The Chandigarh administration has already initiated steps for setting up a state-of-the-art film city to cater to the needs of the film industry. Noted director Yash Chopra, chairman of the Chandigarh advisory tourism forum, had suggested setting up of Kher's school in the city last year. Kher already runs his private acting institute in Mumbai.