Nana Patekar, Veteran Indian Actor and Three-Time National Award Winner, Dies at 75

Nana Patekar, one of Indian cinema's most distinctive actors, died Thursday morning in Goa at 75. He was found unconscious at his home in the early hours and rushed to hospital, where doctors performed continuous cardiopulmonary resuscitation for 45 minutes before declaring him dead. His son Malhar confirmed the death to BBC Marathi.

Patekar had built a career unlike most of his contemporaries. He won three National Film Awards—for Parinda, Krantiveer, and Agni Sakshi—and became known for playing characters that seemed to contain multitudes: gangsters and soldiers, politicians and patriots, villains and comic figures. What set him apart was not the range alone but the intensity he brought to each role, a quality that emerged from decades spent in theatre before cinema made him a household name. He debuted in film in 1978 with Gaman, playing smaller parts until 1989, when his portrayal of the volatile gangster Anna in Parinda changed everything. That performance announced something the industry would come to recognize: here was an actor who could inhabit complexity without softening it.

Throughout the 1990s and beyond, Patekar moved between Hindi and Marathi cinema with equal command. He directed Prahaar and played Major Chauhan in it. He was the villainous Majid Khan in Angaar, the firebrand patriot in Tirangaa, the astute politician in Rajneeti. But perhaps his most celebrated performance came in Khamoshi, where he played a man who could neither hear nor speak—a role that silenced critics who had assumed his power lay only in volume and aggression. He worked with major directors and major stars. Akshay Kumar, who appeared alongside him in the comedy Welcome, remembered him as a performer whose voice, intensity, and honesty could hold an audience's complete attention.

Beyond the screen, Patekar was a figure of consequence in Indian public life. He was an activist and a vocal critic of government policy, particularly on issues affecting farmers. He did not simply make statements; in 2015, he and actor Makarand Anaspure founded the Naam Foundation, which has worked on farmer welfare and water conservation across Maharashtra. He remained active in theatre throughout his career, performing in plays like Purush and Hamidabai Chi Kothi, where he had first developed the gritty dialogue delivery and emotional intensity that would define his film work.

His career was not without shadow. In 2018, actor Tanushree Dutta made allegations of sexual harassment against Patekar related to an incident on a film set a decade earlier. Patekar denied the allegations. The accusation became a catalyst for India's #MeToo movement. In 2019, police cleared him, stating they had found insufficient evidence to proceed. The controversy remained part of his public record.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led official tributes, writing that Patekar's characters would "remain etched in the memory of generations" and that his death had left "a vast void in the artistic world." The assessment captured something true: Patekar had shaped how Indian cinema understood intensity, complexity, and the power of an actor who refused to be simple. His death closes a chapter in a career that spanned nearly five decades and touched both the commercial and artistic heart of Indian film and theatre.