Veteran Actor Nana Patekar Dies at 75 in Goa After Cardiac Arrest

Veteran Indian actor Nana Patekar has died at the age of 75 in Goa after suffering a cardiac arrest. According to his son Malhar speaking to BBC Marathi, he was found unconscious at his home in Goa in the early hours of Thursday and admitted to a hospital. Dr Shekhar Salkar of Manipal Hospital stated that despite 45 minutes of continuous CPR, he could not be revived.

Career and South Indian Film Work

Patekar made his acting debut in the 1978 film Gaman and worked across Hindi and Marathi cinema for close to five decades, winning three National Film Awards. Throughout his career, he also acted in three South Indian films. His first was Bharathiraja's Bommalattam, shot simultaneously in Hindi as Cinema, where he played an eccentric director named Rana who becomes a prime suspect in a series of murders alongside Arjun Sarja. The film later released in Tamil and Telugu as Rana, while the Hindi version released a decade later titled Final Cut of Director. Both versions flopped, though Patekar's performance received praise, and the film can be watched on Sun NXT and Airtel Xstream. His second South Indian film was Ramesh Bhagawathar's Kannada movie Yaksha, co-starring Yogesh and Ruby Parihar, where he played a police officer named Yaksha Raj Pulikeshi. Patekar dubbed his own lines in Kannada by writing his dialogues in Hindi, getting coached on diction by co-star Girish Mattannavar, and pasting paper on Girish's chest to read from. The final South Indian film of his career was Pa Ranjith's social drama Kaala, produced by Dhanush, where he played the soft-spoken gangster-turned-politician Haridev Abhayankar opposite Rajinikanth. Patekar almost rejected the role due to scepticism about playing the antagonist, but Rajinikanth convinced him by saying nobody would look at anyone else while he performed. He was also meant to star in Lingusamy's 2008 film Bheemaa before Prakash Raj replaced him, and he shut down rumours of turning down twenty crore rupees for SS Rajamouli's Varanasi. In 2023 at the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram, he expressed regret that no Malayalam director had ever approached him in fifty years.

Funeral and Tributes

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led tributes on X, praising Patekar's versatility and stating his death left a vast void in the artistic world. Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, his co-star in Welcome, remembered his intense and honest performances. The Maharashtra government announced that his funeral would take place on Thursday evening with full state honours at his farmhouse in Pune.

Context

Patekar became a household name across India following his acclaimed role as the gangster Anna in the 1989 film Parinda, for which he won his first National Film Award and Filmfare Award. He was equally well-known for writing and directing Prahaar, starring in hit patriotic films like Tirangaa and Krantiveer, and later playing an astute politician in Prakash Jha's Rajneeti.