For nearly five decades, Patekar moved effortlessly between Hindi and Marathi cinema, but one ambition remained unfulfilled: he wanted to act in a Malayalam film and had openly wondered why no Malayalam filmmaker had approached him.
BY PC Bureau
October 8:
“I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow.”
Nana Patekar made the remark during one of his final public appearances in Goa, speaking with the matter-of-factness that was characteristic of him. He could not have known that the words would acquire a different weight just days later.
Patekar, one of Indian cinema’s most distinctive actors, died on Thursday at the age of 75 after being found unconscious at his home in Dona Paula, Goa. He was taken to Manipal Hospital, where doctors declared him dead at 5:20 a.m. Preliminary findings pointed to a severe cardiac arrest.
But if Patekar left behind a vast body of work, there was at least one part of Indian cinema he had never managed to enter — Malayalam cinema.
It was not for lack of desire.
After nearly five decades as an actor, Patekar had spoken openly about wanting to work in a Malayalam film. In 2023, while attending the International Film Festival of Kerala, he expressed his surprise that not a single Malayalam filmmaker had approached him during his long career. He had been in Kerala several times for film shoots, but had never been offered a role by a Malayalam director.
Rather than treating the omission simply as an industry slight, Patekar turned it into a challenge to himself.
“If no one has approached me in 50 years, perhaps I have to improve as an actor,” was the sentiment he expressed, while making clear that he would welcome the opportunity to work in Malayalam cinema.
It was a striking admission from an actor who had already won the National Film Award for Best Actor, the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor and Filmfare awards in three different acting categories. He had played gangsters, soldiers, policemen, politicians, fathers and broken men. He had directed films, worked across Hindi and Marathi cinema and appeared in Tamil cinema. Yet he remained curious about a language and an industry in which he had never found a substantial role.
Malayalam cinema, meanwhile, had long been known for giving major actors roles that did not necessarily conform to their established image. For Patekar, it offered something else: a new acting culture, a new language and the possibility of starting, in a sense, from scratch.
There was something characteristically Patekar about that desire. He was never an actor who seemed entirely comfortable with having arrived.
READ: Nana Patekar dies at 75; actor found unconscious at Goa home
From his early years in Marathi theatre to films such as Gaman, Salaam Bombay!, Parinda, Krantiveer, Prahaar, Ab Tak Chhappan and Natsamrat, his career was built around intensity rather than polish. His voice could dominate a scene, but so could his silence. His characters often appeared to be carrying some private argument with the world.
I am shocked beyond words. Feels like a truck has hit me. Deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Nana Patekar ji. An actor par excellence, incomparable to anyone, he carved his place in people’s hearts with his own unique style and brand of acting. There wasn’t a role or a character he couldn’t perform. He aced it all — a larger-than-life hero, a terrifying villain or be it his poker-faced comedy. He was a hero off screen too, and worked tirelessly through his charity for the good of the people.
I had the privilege of sharing screen space with him in Bluffmaster and Housefull 5, but working with him in a Marathi film will forever remain my unfulfilled desire.
My heartfelt and deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and the millions of his well-wishers.
Truly, the end of an era.
Thank you for your wisdom, your chats with me, the pat on my back, the shared laughter and for enriching me as a person.
Rest in glory !!!!— Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) October 8, 2026
That restless quality was still visible late in his career.
And then came those words in Goa: “I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow.”
They were not, as far as is known, a declaration of a final wish. Patekar was speaking about mortality, not announcing an impending death. But after his death, the remark inevitably sounds like something more than a passing observation.
His wish to work in Malayalam cinema, however, was real and publicly expressed. The irony is that an actor who spent nearly 50 years being invited into virtually every corner of Indian cinema never got to make the Malayalam film he had wanted.
For an actor who had played so many lives, there was still one more language in which he wanted to speak.
He never got the chance.
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