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Nana Patekar Takes Responsibility for His Career's Downfall

Nana Patekar’s acting prowess has remained undeniable. He won the National Film Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Krantiveer.

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By Bollyy
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Nana Patekar Takes Responsibility for His Career's Downfall
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by Shantiswarup Tripathi

Nana Patekar’s acting prowess has remained undeniable. He won the National Film Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Krantiveer. Patekar is one of the actors who has made an indelible mark on Indian cinema. In 1994, director Mehul Kumar’s film Krantiveer, starring Nana Patekar, was seen by the legendary Dilip Kumar before its release. Dilip Kumar, impressed by Patekar's performance, confidently declared that "Nana Patekar will always be Krantiveer." Since then, Patekar’s acting reputation has remained solid. He won both the National Film Award and the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Krantiveer.

Awarded Numerous Honors

Nana Patekar has received three National Film Awards, four Filmfare Awards, and two Marathi Filmfare Awards for his acting. He was awarded the Padma Shri Award in 2013 for his contribution to cinema and art. But within the last two years, Nana Patekar himself has made himself counted among the super flap artists by hitting the axe on his own journeys. Till then, Nana Patekar and Utkarsh Sharma's 'Gadar Ek Prem Katha' and 'Gadar 2' fame director Anil Sharma's film 'Vanvaas' was released on 5 December 2024, but it could not even earn ten lakhs on the first day at the box office. Not only this, 'Vanvaas' could not even earn four crores in the entire seven days.

Before talking about this decline in Nana Patekar's career, we are first taking you all back to the 90s. In the 90s, actors like Nana Patekar and Raj Kumar ruled the roost. These actors used to work with full swagger. Even the best and biggest directors were not able to muster the courage to make films with these two actors. At such a time, producer, director, and writer Mehul Kumar directed not one or two but three films with Nana Patekar and Raj Kumar and all the films earned a lot at the box office.

When Mehul Kumar announced the film 'Krantiveer' with Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, and other actors, the film distributors said that Mehul Kumar was making a mistake by casting Nana Patekar as the hero. But after half the film was made, people started praising Mehul's thinking and Nana Patekar's acting after watching some parts of it. The film was completed and some trial shows of the film were held. Those who saw the film in these trial shows were not tired of praising it. This news reached the ears of the great actor of that time, Dilip Kumar. So Dilip Kumar could not even wait for its release to watch this film. Dilip Kumar called the director of the film 'Krantiveer', Mehul Kumar and expressed his desire to watch the film. Mehul Kumar organized a special show of 'Krantiveer' for Dilip Kumar in Sunil Dutt's 'Ajanta Arts Preview Theater' near Dilip Kumar's house. Dilip Kumar had come to watch this film with his wife Saira Banu. After watching the film, he came out of the theatre and sat on the same stone where Nargis Dutt's picture was hung. After being silent for some time, Dilip Kumar praised Nana Patekar's acting and asked Mehul to convey his message to Nana Patekar that 'Nana Patekar is a true revolutionary. And Nana Patekar will always remain a revolutionary.' This statement of Dilip Kumar proved to be true till two years ago. In the film 'Krantiveer', Nana Patekar played the character of a person named Pratap, who is fearless and brave. He is not afraid of anyone. He wages a war against injustice alone. He is even ready to give his life to end the evildoers who do injustice. Nana Patekar's personality in his personal life matched a lot with the character of Pratap, which is why he was able to bring more excellence to this character. Dialogue from the film ‘Krantiveer’ – “You have come to see the spectacle of my death…” Was Nana Patekar seen speaking such dialogues in ‘Vanvaas’? No… there is no enthusiasm or commotion in his dialogues.


In fact, the biggest truth of acting is that the artist's personal life thoughts, personal life ideas, his working style, his stature, his personal personality, some part of it knowingly or unknowingly comes in the character played by him. This is the reason that when the artist plays a character according to his thinking and personality, then that character comes out on the screen. And that character and film becomes successful. And that artist gets an image of his own. The audience starts liking to see that artist in the same kind of image character in every film. In the past, whenever an artist played a character different from his image, the audience rejected that film outright. As a result, the artist and his film have been failing miserably. The same thing applies to Nana Patekar as well. Under what compulsions did Nana Patekar forget his arrogance, his bullying, etc. and in an attempt to earn money or to get close to a particular person or political party, the audience did not like the characters he played. In this way, Nana Patekar is himself cutting his career, or rather say, he is cutting his own feet.

Born on 1 January 1951 in Murud-Janjira of Raigad district of Maharashtra, Nana Patekar started his acting career with Marathi theatre and later joined Hindi films. He wanted to remain confined to theatre only. But he joined films because of late actress Smita Patil. Yes! Nana Patekar had said in a conversation with Aamir Khan- "I came into the film industry because of Smita Patil. Smita brought me to films by holding my hand. We used to do plays together. The fun of plays is something else. I have been in the industry for 50 years."

On Smita Patil's insistence, Nana Patekar did his first film 'Gaman' under the direction of Muzaffar Ali. Smita Patil and Farooq Sheikh were paired in the film 'Gaman'. Nana Patekar played a small role of Vasu in this film. Nana Patekar showed his attitude in his first film itself. After that he has acted in many Marathi and Hindi films.

After acting in the Academy Award-nominated film 'Salaam Bombay' in 1988, he appeared in the film Parinda (1989) directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and was successful in bagging the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for his excellent performance. But when Nana directed and played the lead role in the film 'Prahaar: The Final Attack' in 1991, people accepted his talent. He also earned critical acclaim by acting in many commercially successful films of the 1990s, including 'Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992)' 'Angaar (1992). He received the Filmfare Award for Best Villain for the film 'Raju' (1992); 'Angaar (1993); Krantiveer (1994), for which he won the National Film Award for Best Actor and the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. Patekar won a second National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor along with acclaim for Agni Sakshi (1996). His 1996 performance in Khamoshi: The Musical received great appreciation. In the early 2000s, he received praise for his performances in Shakti: The Power (2002), Ab Tak Chappan (2004) and Apaharan (2005); the latter of which won him his second Filmfare Award for Best Villain, and Taxi No. 9211 (2006). Patekar received widespread acclaim for playing a good-hearted gangster Uday Shetty in the comedy film Welcome (2007) and its sequel Welcome Back (2015) and a politician in the political thriller Raajneeti (2010). In 2016, he starred in the critically and commercially successful Marathi film Natasamrat; in which he played a retired stage actor. He won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor (Marathi) for the film.

Dilip Kumar watched Nana Patekar and Dimple Kapadia's Krantiveer in theater  and said he had 'hangover', recalls film director | PINKVILLA

When Dilip Kumar praised Nana Patekar's acting, by then Nana Patekar had already created a different place and a different image for himself as an actor by acting in films like Pratighat, Prahar, Tiranga. Nana Patekar had also played a character similar to the one in these films in 'Krantiveer'. Audiences like to see Nana Patekar in a fearless, strong, hard-hitting dialogue-speaking, voice-taking, action-taking character. In the films released in the past, every character of Nana Patekar has been speaking such dialogues that the blood of the audience would boil on hearing those dialogues, and a passion and zeal to oppose injustice would arise in them. But as soon as Nana Patekar threw off this garb and appeared in a character with a completely different attitude, the audience also turned their eyes away from Nana Patekar, this is the reason why the audience completely rejected Nana Patekar and his films in Vivek Agnihotri's film "The Vaccine War" released on 28 September 2023 as Dr. Balram Bhargava and Anil Sharma's film "Vanvaas" released on 20 December 2024. Both these films could not even collect a quarter of their cost at the box office. And now everyone is saying the same thing that Nana Patekar's acting has lost its charm. His acting has rusted. Till yesterday, Nana Patekar's presence in a film was considered a guarantee of success. But Nana Patekar lost this credibility due to his mistakes. After all, what was the compulsion he faced that he started playing the role of a person who bows down to others, talks about love, is very weak and helpless and asks for help from others?

Looking at the kind of films Nana Patekar has done in the last two years, it is being said that Nana Patekar is hell bent on ruining his own career. Because on the selection of film and script, Nana Patekar has said- 'As a common man, I see what I will like in it. I listen to the script. I interfere a lot. Many times it also happens that I stay at the same place while writing the story. I don't have any problem later. I want to know people only because of their work. After locking the script, we stay in the tune of that character and stay in that role for 6-8 months. It seems that someone else lives inside us for a long time during the shooting. Our film is Dawa. In the film Vanvaas too, I liked my character a lot and the way of telling the story was very good. Then he wrote the story and I also got involved in it. Anil Sharma has the power to make a small thing very big.' Now why is Nana Patekar saying such things, only he knows... but can Nana Patekar put his hand on his heart and accept that the film 'Vanvaas' is a film of his taste/his thinking/his attitude.

When Nana Patekar was first seen in the role of suited-booted Doctor Balram Bhargava in the film 'The Vaccine War', it was realized from the trailer of this film itself that now the arrogance inside Nana Patekar has disappeared and in the film, he was seen speaking in favor of the government for the first time as Doctor Balram Bhargava. In such a situation, how would the audience accept him. Because this is not Nana Patekar's image. At that time, the audience thought that Nana Patekar would now be seen in his old image in the next film after learning a lesson from the failure of 'The Vaccine War'. But after 'The Vaccine War', he appeared even more helpless, loving, in the dialogues of his character Deepak Tyagi, who spoke with love, there was no uproar in it. The way Nana Patekar appeared as a helpless person in this film, how would the audience tolerate it. Therefore, it became difficult for this film to collect even Rs 50 lakh from the entire country at the ticket window on the first day. In this way, Nana Patekar's career sank. The funny thing is that Nana Patekar is aware of this truth, yet he himself shot himself in the foot... while Nana Patekar knows this truth. In the trailer launch press conference of the film 'Vanvaas', Nana Patekar had said in response to a question - "Would you like to see Sunny Deol beating up Nana Patekar on screen?" Despite this, why did Nana Patekar ruin his career forever by doing films like 'The Vaccine War' and 'Vanvaas' and what did he get in return for doing so, only Nana Patekar's mind would know better.

But when we talked to director Mehul Kumar who has directed Nana Patekar in three successful films, he said, "The actors have been miscast in this film. See, every actor has his own image. If you present him in that image, the film becomes a super duper hit. The audience accepts it. But if you present an actor in an ordinary role, the audience throws him away. Raj Kapoor, Raj Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Nana Patekar, all of them had an image. Whenever these actors did a film against their image and did it only for money, the film could not succeed. Now Nana Patekar's image is very different. But in the film, he was shown as a helpless person, and the audience did not accept this. Nana means hard-hitting dialogues and character. Now if you put him in an emotional role where he cries and wails, how will the audience accept it?"

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