Soumitra Chatterjee: Interesting and lesser-known facts about the living legend

Soumitra Chatterjee once approached Satyajit Ray to suggest a name for a little magazine founded by Soumitra and Nirmalya Acharya in 1961. Ray not only named the magazine ‘Ekkhon’ (Now), he even designed the inaugural cover page and used to illustrate the cover pages regularly even after Soumitra stopped editing the magazine. Several of Ray's scripts were published in the magazine.

Despite his superb acting talent, a young Soumitra at the age of 20 was rejected in his screen test for the titular role of a 1957 Bengali film named ‘Nilachale Mahaprabhu’ directed by Kartik Chattopadhyay. The film was a biopic based on the life of 15th-century mystic Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who started his spiritual journey and Hindu reform movement during his years at Nilachal at Puri. Asim Kumar played the titular role.

During the final year of college, the actor saw a play by the doyen of Bengali theatre, Sisir Bhaduri. The play eventually helped him make up his mind to become an actor. He managed to meet Bhaduri towards the end of his career when his theatre had closed, but over the next 3 years till Bhaduri's death in 1959, Soumitra Chatterjee made him a mentor. He even appeared in a small role in one of Bhaduri's productions.

Apart from theatre and Tollywood, Soumitra Chatterjee played the lead role in Sujoy Ghosh’s short film ‘Ahalya’, co-starring Radhika Apte and Tota Roy Chowdhury. The film takes elements from the mythological story of Ahalya from Ramayana but crafts a modern version of it with a spin. He has done two more short films, ‘Baalir Niche Jawler Shabda’ directed by Nilabja Das and ‘The Forlorn’ directed by Saptaswa Basu.

Soumitra Chatterjee returned to theatre with his production ‘Naam Jiban’ in 1978 after a journey of 20 years in Tollywood. Since 2010, he has been playing the lead role in ‘Raja Lear’, a popular play based on King Lear by William Shakespeare. Soumitra has received widespread critical and popular accolades for his acting in the play. Not only acting, he has written and directed several plays and even translated a few

Satyajit Ray had written many diverse roles keeping in mind Soumitra’s looks and attitude. He went on to become the lead as Feluda in two films – 'Sonar Kella' (1974) and 'Joi Baba Felunath' (1979). The lead character Feluda was a private investigator from Kolkata. Ray even made some illustrations of Feluda based on Soumitra’s physique.

Soumitra Chatterjee was conferred with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2011. He is also a recipient of the coveted Legion d’Honneur – France's highest civilian honour. He never won a National Film Award for acting in the early part of his career, which established his reputation as an actor. So, in a gesture of protest, he turned down the 2001 Special Jury Award for ‘Dekha’ directed by Goutam Ghose.

Under Satyajit Ray’s direction, Soumitra appeared in as many as 14 films, but the veteran artist has also acted in hit films directed by two other stalwarts of Bengali cinema- Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha. He earned rave reviews for his role of an impostor in Mrinal Sen’s ‘Akash Kusum’ (1965). He was equally confident in essaying the swashbuckling horse-riding villain in Tapan Sinha’s ‘Jhinder Bandi’ (1961) which gave Uttam Kumar a stiff challenge.

Some of Satyajit Ray’s landmark movies in which the legendary actor starred include ‘Sonar Kella’, ‘Jai Baba Felunath’, ‘Charulata’, ‘Ghare Baire’, ‘Ashani Sanket’, ‘Devi’, ‘Abhijan’, ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ and ‘Ganashatru’. After ‘Apur Sansar’, he also worked with Sharmila Tagore in a number of Ray films.

In 1959, Soumitra Chatterjee made his debut with Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’ (the third installment of Apu trilogy). But did you know, when Soumitra met Ray on the sets of ‘Jalsaghar’, he was completely unaware of the fact that he had already been selected to portray the titular role in the trilogy?