Iconic Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee died in Kolkata on Sunday. He breathed his last at 12:15 pm at Belle Vue Clinic. He was 85.
“We declare with a heavy heart that Shri Soumitra Chattopadhyay breathed his last at 12.15 pm at Belle Vue Clinic today (15 November 2020). We pay our homage to his soul,” the hospital said in its statement.
A winner of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the Padma Bhushan and two National Awards, Chatterjee had already worked with All India Radio as an announcer and in Bengali theatre (his grandfather was president of a theatre group in then-Calcutta and his father an amateur actor) when Ray offered him the role of Apu in Apur Sansar (1959), the third part of the Apu trilogy, considered one of the greatest Indian films of all time today. Interestingly, Chatterjee had met the legendary filmmaker when he was making the second part Aparajito (1956) but was then deemed too tall and old for the adolescent Apu. Three years later, however, fate came calling.
Chatterjee went on to work on 14 films and two documentaries with Ray eventually, including Devi (1960), Abhijan (1962), Charulata (1964), Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980), Ghare Baire (1984), Ganashatru (1989) and others, besides playing the iconic private investigator Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979). Collaborations with other filmmakers also brought him much acclaim, Mrinal Sen’s Akash Kusum (1965) and Tapan Sinha’s Jhinder Bandi (1961) catapulted him to superstardom, positioning him as arch rival to then numero uno Uttam Kumar.
