Nana Patekar Best Role: Dropped, Then Cast As Anna In Parinda

Nana Patekar Best Role: His Parinda story: dropped from one role, he later played Anna Seth, won the National Award and was burned in the climax fire. A career guide.

By North Desk Bureau

Nana Patekar, who died in Goa on Thursday at 75, was never meant to play the character that made him famous.

In an interview, he recalled that he was first cast in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda (1989) in the part that eventually went to Jackie Shroff: Kishan, the elder brother of Anil Kapoor’s Karan. He said he had rehearsed it for about six months. The film’s documented history agrees that Vinod Chopra first picked him for that role after seeing him in the play Purush.

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Nana Patekar Best Role, but first dropped

Nana Patekar Best Role: Nana said Anil Kapoor asked Vinod Chopra to remove him. When he later asked Anil Kapoor about it, he said, the reply was that Anil Kapoor did not see why he should help make Nana a star. Anil Kapoor added that it was a powerful role and Nana would become one. That is Nana’s account.  

The film’s recorded history gives a different reason: that Anil Kapoor told Vinod Chopra Nana was not suitable to play his elder brother.

In fact, Nana once confronted Anil Kapoor with this in another interview. Anil Kapoor said that he had some experience of casting in movies such as Hum Paanch, and he actually believed that Jackie would be suited for that role, but the final decision was always with the director.

Vinod Chopra offered him Anna instead, and Anil Kapoor asked Jackie Shroff to play the brother.  

Nana went back to the theatre. Three or four months later, he said, Vinod Chopra came back and asked him to play Anna, the part Naseeruddin Shah had been meant to play before backing out. He agreed on one condition: that he would write the part himself. As a result, he said, the fire scene and other elements of Anna were not in the film as first conceived.  

Anna Seth, and the Filmfare award

Parinda was released on November 3, 1989. Anna is a drug lord who runs an oil business as a front. He has Kishan’s friend Inspector Prakash killed, and later shoots Karan and Paro on their wedding night, which pushes Kishan to revenge.

The film is often credited with bringing gritty realism to Bollywood’s portrayal of the Mumbai underworld, in place of the glamour of earlier gangster films.  

The climax is where the film and the making of the film meet. In the final scene’s fire sequence, the crew lost control of a fire built with rubber solution and petrol, and Nana was critically injured. He was hospitalised for nearly two months and returned to filming after about a year. ThePrint reports he was bedridden for six months, so accounts of the recovery differ. The shot of him engulfed in flames, with terror on his face, is in the film.

Parinda won him both the National Film Award and the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. The movie is often called as his breakthrough.

And yes, Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar didn’t work for years after that until Welcome which was 19 years later. The two however became good friends after that.

What came next

• Prahaar (1991): He wrote and directed it, and played Major V.S. Chavan, a feared commando instructor. It starred Madhuri Dixit and Dimple Kapadia and was nominated for Best Story at the Filmfare Awards.
• Krantiveer (1994): The role of the cynic turned crusader, which won him the National Award for Best Actor.  
• Agni Sakshi (1996): Won the National Award for Best Supporting Actor, with Jackie Shroff and Manisha Koirala. It reunited him with the man who had taken his Parinda role.
• Yashwant (1997) and Ab Tak Chhappan (2004): Two police roles that built his later screen persona.  
• Apaharan (2005): Won his second Filmfare Best Villain Award.
• Welcome (2007): As the gangster Uday Shetty. It was among the biggest hits of his career, and he later returned for Welcome Back.  
• Natsamrat (2016): The Marathi film many consider his finest stage-to-screen work.
• Later work: Vanvaas (2024) and O’ Romeo (2026).

His death

Nana Patekar Best Role: Nana was declared dead at Manipal Hospital in Goa on Thursday morning. The hospital’s Dr Shekhar Salkar told ANI he was brought dead and that police were informed because it is a medico-legal case. His body was sent to Goa Medical College for post-mortem.

ALSO: NANA PATEKAR DIES AT 75 IN GOA

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