Nana Patekar, the Indian Hindi and Marathi cinema actor whose roles ranged from the menacing crime lord of “Parinda” to the comic gangster of “Welcome,” died Oct. 8, at his residence in Goa. He was 75.
“Krantiveer” (1994), in which he played a disgraced gambler who ends up rallying ordinary people to fight back, won him the Indian National Film Award for best actor along with Filmfare and Screen awards. A second National Award for supporting actor followed for “Agni Sakshi” (1996). The same year he played the deaf parent of Manisha Koirala in “Khamoshi: The Musical.”
In the 2000s he played a police encounter specialist in “Ab Tak Chhappan” (2004) and a taxi driver opposite John Abraham in “Taxi No. 9211” (2006). With “Welcome” (2007), in which he played Uday Shetty, a mob boss with thwarted movie-star ambitions, he found a new audience, and he returned to the part in “Welcome Back” (2015). He played a politician in “Raajneeti” (2010).
In Marathi cinema, he won Filmfare Marathi best actor awards for “Dr. Prakash Baba Amte – The Real Hero” (2014) and “Natsamrat” (2016), in which he starred as an aging theater veteran. He was the Hindi voice of Shere Khan in “The Jungle Book” (2016) and appeared opposite Rajinikanth in the Tamil film “Kaala” (2018).
Later credits included “The Vaccine War” (2023), “Vanvaas” (2024) and “Housefull 5” (2025). This year he starred in series “Sankalp” on Amazon MX Player and appeared alongside Shahid Kapoor in “O’Romeo.”
His later years were also marked by controversy. Actor Tanushree Dutta accused him in 2008 of harassing her on the set of “Horn ‘Ok’ Pleassss,” and she repeated the allegation in 2018. Her accusations helped spark the #MeToo movement in the Hindi film industry. Mumbai police registered a case against Patekar and three others in October 2018 but filed a closure report in June 2019. Patekar consistently denied the allegations.
