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He was born to Ashalata & Mohit Kumar Chatterjee. His daughter Poulami Bose was born in 1960, during his marriage to actress Deepa Chatterjee.

• Chatterjee screened positive for Covid-19 in October 2020 and is currently treated at the Belle Vue Clinic in Kolkata.
• He did not respond to the second Covid-19 test, which was performed on October 14.
• The condition became critical due to his comorbidities (urinary tract infection, changes in salt potassium levels, etc.), necessitating his admission to the intensive care unit (ICU).
• However, his health improved starting on October 13, and on October 14, he was moved from a Covid unit to a non-Covid one.
• He was kept on invasive ventilation and BiPap support for his care during the most crucial times.
• But the therapy methods changed as his health began to improve. A 16-person medical staff has been in charge of looking after him.
• His condition deteriorated on October 25.

On November 15, 2020, Chatterjee passed away in Kolkata.

Interesting Facts About Soumitra Chatterjee

• He has received the highest honor of the Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres.
• He remains the main character in most of Ray's films.
• His admission to the hospital was caused by COVID-19.

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Soumitra Chatterjee

• Born January 19 , 1935 · Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
• Died November 15 , 2020 · Kolkata, West Bengal, India (complications from COVID-19)
• Birth name Soumitra Chattapadhaya
• Soumitra Chatterjee is an Indian actor, playwright and poet. World-renowned film director Satyajit Ray has acted in multiple shadow films. He has made Bengali film a place in the court of the world. In his long acting career, he has received many awards from home and abroad. His films have also won numerous awards. He died on 15th November, 2020 at the age of 85. Even after his death, his performance has been and will always be remembered in the hearts of all the audience. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Narugopal Mandal
• Spouse Deepa Chatterjee (1960 - November 15, 2020) (his death, 2 children)
• Acted in 15 out of 34 films made by Late Satyajit Ray .
• In 2012, he was accorded India's highest film honor, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.
• Bengali film and stage actor.
• In 2018 the French government conferred upon him its highest civilian award, the Legion of Honor.
• Won Best Actor at New York's Winter Film Awards for Amit Ranjan Biswas' "Bridge" (2016).

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Biography of soumitra chatterjee | the greatest showman, a biography of soumitra chatterjee by amitava nag sheds light on professional and personal aspects of the late actor’s life.

For Satyajit Ray’s 70th birthday in 1991, Soumitra Chatterjee sent me a few lines about Ray as his contribution to a celebratory book.

“Before shooting a film, Ray reads his script aloud to the actors,” wrote Soumitra. “It always seems as if the entire work is already there. So where does the actor have something to contribute? I think the most important contribution an actor can make to a Ray film is to provide the character he is playing with an emotional authenticity. This grows out of Ray’s scripts. They are such a true depiction of our people’s lives that they evoke a spontaneous emotional reaction in the actor’s mind.”

How true those words seem today – of Ray and of one of his most emotionally authentic actors. Now both of them have left us in person. But they will never be forgotten around the world.

Chatterjee is indelibly linked with Apu, the struggling, intensely romantic, Calcutta-based youth born in rural poverty (first encountered in Pather Panchali), whom Chatterjee portrayed in The World of Apu (Apur Sansar), the third part of Ray’s Apu Trilogy, made in 1959 – his first role for Ray.

The young Chatterjee, like many Bengalis, strongly identified with Apu. “We were to a great extent Apus of our time,” he told me when I was researching Ray’s biography in the 1980s.

Even Apu’s snap decision to get married to a complete stranger – when requested by his friend in the middle of the night to take the place of a bridegroom who is mentally ill – did not strike Chatterjee as strange. “What is after all so extraordinary about it? It’s nothing but an extension of a normally negotiated marriage, except that that takes a little more time. Apu had to give his consent on the spur of the moment.”

As Ray himself remarked, Chatterjee needed to empathise strongly with a role to give of his best: “Given bad material, he turns out a bad performance, because his distaste for the material shows.”

From the 1950s, Chatterjee acted in more than 210 films, as well as being a playwright, theatre actor and poet. Throughout, Bengal remained his milieu; he was never drawn to working in Bollywood cinema, no doubt out of his distaste for its material. “Soumitra is the finest actor in the land today, but totally unheard of outside Bengal. It’s a loss for India, Bollywood and I guess, a bit for Soumitra,” remarked the Indian poet, journalist and filmmaker Pritish Nandy in 2012.

For Ray, Chatterjee made 14 major films (and also read Ray’s commentary for his documentary about his celebrated nonsense-poet father, Sukumar Ray). Following The World of Apu, he appeared – either in a lead or key supporting role – in Devi (The Goddess, 1960), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961), Abhijan (The Expedition, 1962), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Kapurush (The Coward, 1965), Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970), Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress, 1975), Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1978), Hirak Rajar Dese (The Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980), Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), Ganasatru (An Enemy of the People, 1989) and Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree, 1990).

Four of these films are generally regarded as classics, both in Bengal and beyond Bengal: The World of Apu, Charulata, Days and Nights in the Forest and Distant Thunder. In addition, The Golden Fortress and The Elephant God are much loved in Bengal, because of Chatterjee’s portrayal of the detective Feluda, a character created and illustrated by Ray in his many detective novels beginning in 1965. When Chatterjee met Ray after reading the first Feluda novel, he told him: “Manikda, I think you have modelled Feluda on yourself? The illustrations look a bit like you!” To which Ray replied, laughing, “But no, many people have come to me and said it looks like you!”

The diversity of characters in these six films is an extraordinary tribute to Chatterjee’s versatile acting and his sympathy for Ray’s direction. He could play a village-born youth in pre-war Calcutta, a Victorian would-be writer, an affluent 1960s Calcuttan semi-intellectual and a caste-ridden Brahmin village priest during the 1940s Bengal Famine, not to mention a shrewd, charming, up-to-the-minute detective – all with equal conviction, appeal and humour.

Ten faces of Soumitra Chatterjee in Satyajit Ray’s films

• Soumitra Chatterjee, 19 January 1935–15 November 2020.

Andrew Robinson is the author of Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema and The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic.

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Soumitra Chatterjee, celebrated Indian actor and ‘one-man stock company’ for Satyajit Ray, dies at 85

Soumitra Chatterjee, a Bengali actor who starred in celebrated films by director Satyajit Ray, playing wide-eyed young men, cocky intellectuals and charming detectives in movies that were widely admired for their visual poetry and emotional depth, died Nov. 15 at a hospital in Kolkata, India. He was 85.

The cause was complications from covid-19, according to Indian media reports. Mr. Chatterjee had been hospitalized in early October after testing positive for the coronavirus . In a tweet , Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called his passing “a colossal loss to the world of cinema” and to the “cultural life of West Bengal and India.”

In a more than six-decade career, Mr. Chatterjee appeared in nearly 300 feature films and collaborated with prominent Indian directors such as Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen, ultimately expanding his creative ambitions to work as a poet, essayist, literary editor, painter, and writer, director and star of plays. But he was best known for his partnership with Ray, whose films put India on the world-cinema map.

Like Toshiro Mifune in the movies of Akira Kurosawa or Max von Sydow in the films of Ingmar Bergman, Mr. Chatterjee was a fixture of Ray’s work, becoming the director’s “one-man stock company,” as film critic Pauline Kael once put it. Collaborating on 14 features, their work together marked a sharp contrast to the melodramas and musical extravaganzas typically made in Bollywood, as Mumbai’s Hindi-language film industry is known.

Reviewing Ray’s Bengali-language Apu trilogy, in which Mr. Chatterjee made his feature-film debut, movie critic Roger Ebert wrote that “it is about a time, place and culture far removed from our own, and yet it connects directly and deeply with our human feelings. It is like a prayer, affirming that this is what the cinema can be, no matter how far in our cynicism we may stray.”

Mr. Chatterjee was 23 when he was cast as the title character in “The World of Apu” (1959), the final installment in Ray’s trilogy about a poor but high-caste Bengali man who leaves home, tries to become a novelist and finds himself consumed by grief. “When I played Apu, I did not play myself, I played a generation,” said Mr. Chatterjee, who saw his own life reflected in the protagonist’s journey from countryside to city.

He was acting in plays and announcing radio programs when he met Ray in the mid-1950s, through a friend who was working as the director’s assistant. By then, Ray had made his directorial debut with “Pather Panchali,” the first Apu film, and was searching for a compelling young actor who could star in “Aparajito,” the sequel.

Mr. Chatterjee was deemed too old and too tall for the part. But as he told the story, their meeting inspired Ray to make a third part to the series, which he announced after “Aparajito” won the top prize at the 1957 Venice Film Festival. “He had found someone who could play the adult Apu,” Mr. Chatterjee recalled in a 2012 interview with the news website Rediff. “He decided to make the film because he saw me.”

New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther later praised Mr. Chatterjee’s performance as “timid, tender, sad, serene, superb,” calling him “the perfect extension of Apu as a man.” Collectively, the Apu trilogy has influenced directors as varied as Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson and Dennis Hopper, whose landmark counterculture film “Easy Rider” (1969) featured a meditative scene in which Peter Fonda mirrors Mr. Chatterjee’s Apu, running his hand through the grass in a moment of reflection.

Mr. Chatterjee was known in part for the expressive power of his gaze — notably while delivering soulful looks as a poet who falls for his cousin’s wife in “Charulata” (1964) and as a screenwriter who yearns for a married woman in “The Coward” (1965), both directed by Ray and starring Madhabi Mukherjee as the love interest.

In an email, Ray biographer Andrew Robinson wrote that Mr. Chatterjee’s “finest performances are united by emotional sensitivity combined with educated intelligence,” including as a restless bachelor in “Days and Nights in the Forest” (1970), as a village Brahmin in “Distant Thunder” (1973) and as the beloved detective Feluda in “The Golden Fortress” (1974) and “The Elephant God” (1979), all directed by Ray.

“In this combination,” Robinson added, “Chatterjee epitomized the best of Bengal, like Ray himself.” His comments were echoed by Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who reportedly declared that on-screen, Mr. Chatterjee “became the quintessential Bengali — intellectually inclined, of middle-class orientation, sensitive and likable.”

Soumitra Chatterjee was born in the Indian city of Krishnanagar, then under British rule, on Jan. 19, 1935. His grandfather and father, a lawyer, were both amateur actors, and Mr. Chatterjee recalled staging children’s plays in the courtyard of his home.

“Mattresses were brought out for the stage, bedsheets were used for the curtains, and with the aluminum foil in cigarette packets my parents used to make crowns for us” as props, he told India’s Telegraph newspaper .

After graduating from the University of Calcutta in what is now Kolkata, he received a master’s degree from the school in Bengali literature. He also studied under the noted actor Sisir Bhaduri, though he said he learned film acting primarily from Ray, who emerged as both a mentor and father figure while taking him to watch Hollywood movies on Sunday mornings and loaning books on the cinema.

Mr. Chatterjee sometimes helped him during productions, once pushing the camera dolly for a shot in “Distant Thunder.” “He would try to stop me from doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself,” he told an interviewer in 1992, shortly before Ray’s death. “Working with Ray, it seems the most natural thing in the world to make his filmmaking efforts move smoothly. He is that kind of man.”

While Ray was celebrated overseas and received an honorary Academy Award, his movies were typically overshadowed in India by Bollywood fare. Mr. Chatterjee was often beaten at the box office by fellow leading man Uttam Kumar but had some of the greatest commercial success of his career after starring as Feluda, a kind of Bengali Sherlock Holmes that Ray created for a children’s magazine story and adapted into novels.

“I was finally playing a character that my children would love,” Mr. Chatterjee told the Indian Express earlier this year . “But when Feluda became a cult figure, I used to wonder why should people, particularly the young ones, know me only for playing Feluda? Later on, I realized I was mistaken. Even if one young child remembers me as Feluda, that makes me happy as an actor.”

He had two children with his wife, Deepa Chatterjee, but complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Chatterjee played down his film work in recent years — “Given bad material, he turns out a bad performance, because his distaste for the material shows,” Ray once said — yet received a host of awards, including India’s highest film honor in 2012 and the French Legion of Honor in 2018. His final stage roles included King Lear, in a Bengali adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.

“I have a fear: If I don’t work, I won’t exist,” said Mr. Chatterjee, who had credits in seven films that were still in production when he died. “I don’t want to burden anyone when I die,” he added in a 2016 interview, “but the dream would be to pass away while I’m acting. Not everyone can be that fortunate. I would call such death an accidental gift of life.”

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Soumitra Chatterjee, Globally Acclaimed Indian Film Star, Dies at 85

His roles in classic movies directed by Satyajit Ray won him admiration from cinephiles and made him a hero to his fellow Bengalis.

By Alex Traub

Soumitra Chatterjee, an Indian actor who incarnated the beauty and fragility of youthful idealism in films by the director Satyajit Ray and helped solidify Mr. Ray’s place in cinematic history, died on Sunday at a hospital in Kolkata, India. He was 85.

His daughter, Poulami Bose, said the cause was brain damage and organ failure brought on by Covid-19.

Mr. Chatterjee, who appeared in more than 350 movies, rose to fame playing the title character in “ The World of Apu ” (1959). The film, the third in Mr. Ray’s famous “Apu" trilogy, cast Mr. Chatterjee in an epic role familiar from canonical works of literature: A young man imagines a glorious literary career from a shabby garret apartment in a capital city but then encounters the hard realities of adult life, which he struggles to transcend.

The role was Mr. Chatterjee’s film debut, and it catapulted him to critical notice abroad and celebrity in India.

In one memorable scene, while delivering a monologue about the novel he plans to write, Mr. Chatterjee furrows his brow with intellectual severity, strikes the faraway look of an imagination at work, pauses and points for emphasis as he narrates the plot, and finally, with arms raised in triumph, smiles with joy at the act of creation. The sequence appears to have the naturalness of improvisation, but it was actually the product of laborious preparation.

Mr. Ray’s son, Sandip, said he saw the work that Mr. Chatterjee put into his roles when he peeked at one of the actor’s scripts. “It was full of handwritten notes,” he told The Telegraph, Kolkata’s English-language daily, in a recent interview. “Every minute detail of voice modulation, pause, look, movement and whatnot was in there.”

For “The World of Apu,” Mr. Chatterjee kept a diary in which he specified what Apu was doing every moment he was offscreen. He brought the same intensity to “ Charulata ” (1964), a Ray movie about tensions in an upper-class family set in 1879, in which Mr. Chatterjee plays an aspiring poet and essayist. He spent six months mastering the 19th-century style of Bengali handwriting so that the scenes that depicted him in the act of composition could appear authentic.

The young writers Mr. Chatterjee played in “The World of Apu” and “Charulata” set a template for other characters he became known for. In Mr. Ray’s “ The Golden Fortress ” (1974), about kidnappers looking for a long-forgotten treasure, Mr. Chatterjee plays a private eye whose ambition is softened by high-mindedness and impracticality. In “ Days and Nights in the Forest ” (1969), which follows young friends on a vacation, Mr. Chatterjee’s businessman character is sardonic and self-confident but, like the aspiring writers, yearns for a different life.

His characters often wore a shabby-chic outfit of sport coats and scarves — even when, in one movie, he briefly appeared as an ash-covered coal miner.

Mr. Chatterjee had the ability to project guilelessness, sometimes as a naïf but on other occasions as a selfless hero. His performance as Feluda, Mr. Ray’s riff on Sherlock Holmes, enshrined the character as a standard-bearer of Bengali cultural values. For a crime-fighting detective, Feluda was unusually intellectual, the sort of sleuth who would blow open a case by discovering, as he does in “The Golden Fortress,” a spelling mistake in a hotel register.

Mr. Ray invented Feluda as a character in a series of children’s stories he began writing in the 1960s, which he adapted into two movies starring Mr. Chatterjee, “The Golden Fortress” and “ The Elephant God ” (1978). Since Mr. Ray’s death in 1992 at 70, there have been more than a dozen new Feluda movies with a succession of new stars, but none have come close to supplanting Mr. Chatterjee’s portrayal of Feluda in the hearts of fans.

Internationally, Mr. Chatterjee attracted an admiring audience, but it was composed mainly of critics and connoisseurs who followed Mr. Ray’s work and lived near theaters that showed foreign movies.

The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael praised Mr. Chatterjee as Mr. Ray’s “one-man stock company” and wrote in 1973 that Mr. Chatterjee and his frequent co-star, Sharmila Tagore, were “modern figures with overtones of ancient deities.”

When some of Mr. Ray’s early films were first released in the United States in the 1960s, New York Times critics called Mr. Chatterjee’s performances “ strikingly sensitive ” and “ timid, tender, sad, serene, superb .” American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson have cited as inspirations some of the Ray movies that starred Mr. Chatterjee.

In 2015, “The World of Apu” returned to theaters across the United States as part of a restoration of the trilogy. American outlets like Criterion have made subtitled copies of movies by Mr. Ray starring Mr. Chatterjee available for streaming online.

Despite the success of their partnership, Mr. Chatterjee spoke later in life about not wanting to be seen as “a Satyajit Ray puppet.”

And yet the line between the two men sometimes blurred. While looking at Mr. Ray’s early drawings of Feluda, Mr. Chatterjee remarked that the character resembled Mr. Ray himself. “Really?” Mr. Ray replied . “Several people have told me that I’ve drawn him with you in mind.”

Soumitra Chatterjee was born on Jan. 19, 1935, in Krishnanagar, a small town in what was then the British province of Bengal. His father, Mohit Kumar Chatterjee, was a lawyer and a member of the Indian Independence Movement; his mother, Ashalata, was a homemaker. She named Soumitra after a character from Bengali literature and would, rather than sing him lullabies, recite poems by the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore .

Soumitra starred in plays held in the family’s courtyard, where bedsheets had been transformed into curtains and the aluminum foil of his parents’ cigarette packets became crowns for him and his young relatives to wear as part of their costumes.

He avoided schoolbooks, but he was reading Tolstoy at 14. He skipped class to watch movies not meant for children, but got caught when he overheard a conversation between his parents about a particular scene and chimed in.

Mr. Chatterjee moved to Kolkata to attend City College and graduated with a degree in Bengali literature. He was inspired to become a professional actor after coming under the tutelage of the Bengali actor and director Sisir Bhaduri , who advised him to understand the roles he was assigned by scanning a script for subtext like a detective searching for clues.

In 1960 he married Deepa Chatterjee, his childhood sweetheart.

After Mr. Ray launched Mr. Chatterjee to Bengali superstardom and international art-house renown, Mr. Chatterjee’s artistic ambitions expanded. He founded, with a college friend, a literary magazine, Ekkhon (Bengali for “Now”), which published the work of eminent writers like Mahasweta Devi and illustrations and scripts by Mr. Ray.

Mr. Chatterjee also wrote more than a dozen books of poems and wrote, translated, directed, produced and starred in plays. He exhibited his watercolor paintings across India.

Later in his film career, he became typecast as a genial grandpa who upheld the noble values of a bygone era in roles that were, by his own admission, “ hackneyed ” or even “ detestable .” “One feels sad for Soumitra,” one Bengali reviewer wrote.

In addition to Ms. Bose and his wife, Mr. Chatterjee is survived by his son, Sougata, and two grandchildren.

Mr. Chatterjee, who was 14 years younger than Mr. Ray, regarded him as a mentor and paid him a visit at his home every Sunday morning.

His admiration was not “based on external considerations, like how successful he was, how many awards he got or how wild people were about him,” Mr. Chatterjee said in a video interview . “I could see his artistic vision right before my eyes. It was a vast, universal vision. He had an ability to understand all of life.”

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Soumitra Chatterjee – The Renaissance Bhadralok Of Bengal

2021, TMYS Review - March

For more than a month even the most atheists of Bengal have been praying for the recovery of the beloved legend Soumitra Chatterjee, hoping for a miracle. People's heart skipped a beat when on 15th November 2020, they received the news of the demise of the iconic personality, a news which they have been dreading to hear. Bengalis all over the world felt an insuperable sense of loss, a vacuum that is unbearable. Soumitra Chatterjee is a symbol of all the qualities that a progressive Bengali should encompass but is failing due to the hollow imitation of modernization of the west. He showed us the value of nourishing and respecting our own traditions and culture, yet have an insatiable zeal to know more, to embrace new ideas, have an open mind for liberal thoughts and, above all, faith in humanity. In spite of numerous personal disturbances including physical and mental health issues, he proved to every Bengali, every Indian at large, how to live a rich life. This article is a small attempt to capture Soumitra Chatterjee’s deep personality that goes beyond his role as an actor. Intentionally rejecting the path of stardom that every actor seeks, he chose a path less travelled, less popular, and perhaps that indeed made a lot of difference. With his collaboration with Ray, Chatterjee participated in the Indian New Wave films that gave Bengal a global recognition. The article is a peek into vast aesthetic spirit that is not just restricted to motion pictures. Bengal did not just lose a great actor that brought realism into fictional films, but also lost a gifted painter, a remarkable poet, a charming elocutionist, a brilliant thespian and, above all, a noble human.

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This essay explores the rich archive of photographer Nemai Ghosh whose production stills on the sets of Satyajit Ray kept his cinema alive in popular memory. While it might appear that Ghosh was overwhelmed by the vision of Satyajit Ray, the essay explores how the documentary impulse in his work created continuity as well as rupture with the cinema of Ray and others in Bengal. Nemai Ghosh's forte lay in capturing candid moments of actors just before and after filming on the sets. These interstitial moments caught between the vision of the director and the photographer shooting a production still could be used to tease out other deeper meanings about star personas. As we look through Nemai Ghosh's larger body of work, particularly at images which may not have found public circulation as film stills, we see other kinds of mediations between the photographer, the camera and his subjects. By extricating still frames out of motion, Ghosh's photographs invite us to contemplate certain tensions between female actors, their roles and their extra cinematic lives. Recollections of these stars are layered by stories, anecdotes and popular myths. In this essay, I explore what it might mean to look back at Nemai Ghosh's images through the prism of these overlapping memories.

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Soumitra Chatterjee Biography

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Soumitra Chatterjee: Acting titan who took Indian cinema to the world

KOLKATA: He was the actor who epitomized the best of world cinema, transcending the boundaries of the country, state and language to give expression to Satyajit Ray's cinematic vision and get framed in celluloid greatness.

But the legacy of Soumitra Chatterjee, who died on Sunday at the age of 85, is not limited to the Ray firmament, just as he was never only a Bengali star of Bengali cinema.

The suave actor of the world, sometimes called last of the Mohicans and familiar to students of cinema anywhere in the globe, acted in 14 Ray films and over 300 others, gracefully transitioning into commercial cinema in a variety of roles.

He made his presence felt on the stage too -- as actor, playwright and director. One of the acting world's greatest luminaries slipped away just a day after the festival of lights -- and more than a month after he was admitted to a Kolkata hospital with COVID-19.

The actor is dead, his work lives on.

As debuts go, his was one for the history books, the image of a bearded young man with his son on his shoulders in that still from 'Apur Sansar' imprinting itself in filmic greatness.

His portrayal of a grieving widower who ultimately reconnects with his estranged son in the 1959 film that completed Ray's famous Apu trilogy made him the toast of the world cinema community.

And the rest as they say is history.

IN PICTURES |  Soumitra Chatterjee: Bengali cinema's Alt Superstar

According to film lore, Chatterjee auditioned for Ray's 'Aparajito' in 1957, the second movie in the trilogy that began with 'Pather Panchali', but the director found the actor, then 20, too old to play the adolescent Apu.

Chatterjee, however, remained in touch with Ray and eventually landed the role of Apu.

His bearded look, it is said, reminded Ray of a young Tagore.

In the decades that followed, Chatterjee became the go-to actor to play characters of certain age and intelligence in movies and theatre while also writing poetry and plays.

It was a lifelong pursuit of the arts that ended today.

Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1935, Chatterjee, spent his early years in Krishnanagar in Nadia district where he completed his schooling.

He was introduced to acting through family stage plays by his grandfather and lawyer father, both amateur theatre actors.

Chatterjee did his masters in Bengali literature from Calcutta University.

Interested in the arts from a young age, he saw a play by Bengali theatre doyen Sisir Bhaduri. It was a turning point, making him realise he wanted to be an actor.

However, it was only when he reached the sets of 'Apur Sansar' on August 9, 1958 for his first day of shooting that he knew he had found his calling.

There was no looking back after that and Chatterjee became an integral part of Bengal's art and cultural life with his movies.

But he represented India too on the world stage.

A black and white photograph of a dapper Chatterjee in a white Nehru jacket and black trousers -- with Shashi Kapoor and Madhur Jaffrey and Felicity Kendall between them -- at the Berlinale in 1965 where his film 'Charulata' won Ray the best director award resurfaced recently and was widely shared on social media with men and women old and young sighing at the elegance and charm of the days that once were.

But copybook handsome Chatterjee may not have agreed.

In a 2008 interview with CNBC he described himself as the ugly duckling of his family.

This lack of confidence, he said, helped him focus more intently on his craft.

"And my substantial work in theatre has established that I am not just a Satyajit Ray puppet," he added famously.

After all, Chatterjee was often referred to as Ray's 'alter ego', their cinematic relationship giving expression to one of the greatest eras in the history of world cinema.

The maestro's favourite actor played the lead in masterpieces such as 'Devi' (1960), a taxi driver in 'Abhijan' (1962), 'Arayner Din Ratri' (1970), 'Ghare Baire' (1984) and 'Sakha Prashakha' (1990).

The three-decade camaraderie ended only with the film maestro's death in 1992.

Their collaboration has often been compared to celebrated actor-director pairings such as Toshiro-Akira Kurosawa, Marcello Mastroianni-Federico Fellini and Max von Sydow-Ingmar Bergman, "He influenced me enormously. He was one of my mentors I would say. I would not be here had he not been there,' Chatterjee told PTI in 2012.

He also worked with other greats -- Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha and Tarun Majumdar.

His role as the swashbuckling villain Mayurbhan in Sinha's "Jhinder Bondi" saw him team up with the legendary Uttam Kumar.

They worked together in eight films and were known for their different approaches to cinema 'Kumar, the romantic hero of the masses, and Chatterjee the intellectual, maybe more cerebral star. Chatterjee was also considered one of the first proponents of the naturalistic style of acting in Bengali cinema' a trademark of Ray's movies.

His role as Kshit da, a swimming coach in the movie "Kony", with the dialogue "Fight, Kony, fight!" is still remembered as an example of indomitable spirit and inspiration against all odds.

Known to be a perfectionist, Chatterjee in his later years worked with Goutam Ghose, Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh The consummate actor, a pancreatic cancer survivor, kept going even in his 80s -- in the National Award film "Mayurakshi" (2017), "Bela Sheshe" (2015) and "Posto" (2017).

Standouts in his theatre career include his rendition of Shakespeare's King Lear in Suman Mukhopadhyay's play that earned him accolades both nationally and globally.

He also wrote over 15 plays and directed more than 30 stage productions.

Despite several offers, Chatterjee never ventured into Bollywood as he felt he wouldn't get the freedom to pursue his other literary genres.

A yoga enthusiast, he edited the magazine Eksan (Now) for more than two decades. But Chatterjee was not just about cinema and theatre.

Unlike many celebrities, the die-hard Marxist was vocal about his views and spoke out on controversial issues such as societal intolerance and the 2016 demonetization exercise.

And he never hungered for awards, in fact often demonstrated his aversion for them.

He turned down the Padma Shri twice.

ALSO READ | Legendary actor Soumitra Chatterjee dies at Kolkata hospital

In 2001, he also refused the National Award to protest the alleged "biased attitude" of the Awards committee which gave his film "Dekha" a Special Jury honour while giving the main award to Hindi film "Pukar".

However, he later received the Padma Bhushan in 2004.

In 2006, he won the National Award for "Poddokhep".

He became the first Indian actor to receive the 'Officier des Arts et Metiers', the highest award for arts given by the French government in 1999.

He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Italy.

In 2012, he won the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and in 2018 Légion d' honneur, the highest civilian award in France.

French filmmaker Catherine Berge had directed a full-length documentary named "Gaach" on life and work on Chatterjee.

Chatterjee is survived by his wife Deepa Chatterjee, daughter Poulomi Basu and son Sougata Chatterjee.

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Biography of Soumitra Chatterjee Paragraph

Write a paragraph on the biography of Soumitra Chatterjee, the veteran actor. 

Soumitra Chatterjee, His Early Life:

Soumitra Chatterjee who devoted himself in the form of artiste had become a renowned creative entity to us. One of the legendary stars in the galaxy of film industry, Soumitra Chatterjee was born on 19th January, 1935 at Krishnanagar in the district of Nadia. He had a family with patronizing the acting tradition. The famous theatre personality Mrityunjay Sil was his friend who had a key influence on Soumitra Chatterjee to become an actor. He completed his graduation from the City College and M.A from the University of Calcutta. 

Acting Career:

The acting skills of Sisir Bhaduri influenced him so much that he decided to choose acting as his ultimate destination. He started his professional career as an announcer in the All India Radio.  But the legendary director Satyajit Ray’s “ Apur Sansar ” defined his path for the future to come.

It may be justified to say that Soumitra Chatterjee got the proper shape as an actor in the hands of Satyajit Ray. He always considered himself fortunate enough to show his acting skills in fourteen films like –  Debi, Charulata, Araner Din Ratri, Ghare Baire, Shakha Proshakha, Ganashatru  and many more under the direction of Satyajit Ray. The famous detective series  Feluda  was scripted only for him to make him immortal.

Not only in Satyajit Ray, he was also spontaneous and effortless in Mrinal Sen’s  Akash Kusum, Moha Prithibi  ; Tapan Sinha’s  Jhinder Bandi, Wheel Chair, Kshudhita Pashan  ; Tarun Majumdar’s  Aloo, Sanser Srimante, Ganadevata  etc. 

Versatile Soumitra Chatterjee:

This iconic multi-talented artist was also known for his poetry, recitations and stage-acting. He had successfully published twelve books under his name. Often he said that Rabindranath stayed in his heart and Jibanananda was his eternal quest. 

Awards and Honours:

Soumitra Chatterjee was the recipient of many prestigious honours and awards. In 1998, he was awarded with the Sangeet Natak Academy Award. In 2004, he was bestowed with the prestigious Padma Bhushan. In 2012, he was awarded with India’s highest award in cinema Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Though he said, “I don’t work for awards. They don’t inspire my creativity. When I work I try to be honest in my craft.”

On 15th November, 2020 this bright star left from this earth for ever leaving his wife Deepa Chatterjee, a son and a daughter. 

We can say in the words of kabi Srijato –

“Matitei theko, sobchaye ucchu tara.”

(Stay on the earth, the highest star)

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Iconic Actor Soumitra Chatterjee Dies At 85; "Apu Said Goodbye," Tweets Mamata Banerjee

Soumitra chatterjee was taken to kolkata's belle vue clinic hospital on october 6, a day after he tested positive for the coronavirus..

A file photo of Soumitra Chatterjee from fan-club (courtesy soumitrachattopadhyayo )

• The actor was admitted to the hospital on October 6
• He was admitted a day after testing positive for COVID-19
• He later tested negative but had COVID-19 induced encephalopathy

Legendary actor Soumitra Chatterjee , star of some of Bengali cinema's finest films, has died. He was 85. Mr Chatterjee tested positive for COVID-19 last month and was taken to hospital. An official statement read: "We declare with 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." West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at the hospital soon after Soumitra Chatterjee's death to be with the actor's family. 

In a series of tweets, she wrote: "Feluda is no more. 'Apu' said goodbye. Farewell, Soumitra (Da) Chatterjee. He has been a legend in his lifetime. International, Indian and Bengali cinema has lost a giant. We will miss him dearly. The film world in Bengal has been orphaned. Best known for his films with Satyajit Ray, Soumitra Da was conferred with Legion of Honor, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Banga Bibhushan, Padma Bhushan and several National Awards. A great loss. Saddened. Condolences to his family, the film fraternity and his admirers across the world"

Best known for his films with Satyajit Ray, Soumitra Da was conferred with Legion of Honor, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Banga Bibhushan, Padma Bhushan & several National Awards. A great loss. Saddened. Condolences to his family, the film fraternity & his admirers across the world 2/2 — Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 15, 2020

Soumitra Chatterjee was taken to Kolkata's Belle Vue Clinic hospital on October 6 , a day after he tested positive for the coronavirus. His condition at the time was described as stable. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee called to enquire about Mr Chatterjee's health.

Concern about Soumitra Chatterjee's health grew as days passed, particularly a fear of a cancer relapse - the actor had survived prostate cancer. Mr Chatterjee, who received plasma therapy to fight the virus, was attended by a team of 10 doctors from Belle Vue Clinic.

Soumitra Chatterjee, Bengal's most celebrated actor, was best-known for his many collaborations with filmmaker Satyajit Ray - they made 14 movies together. He made his debut in Mr Ray's 1959 film Apur Sansar , part of the acclaimed Pather Panchali trilogy. Mr Chatterjee was also directed by Satyajit Ray in Charulata, Devi, Teen Kanya, Ghare Baire, Ganashatru and other films. He was the first actor to play the role of Feluda, the detective created by Satyajit Ray. Soumitra Chatterjee starred as Feluda in two films directed by Mr Ray - Sonar Kella and Joy Baba Felunath .

Soumitra Chatterjee was also directed by other Bengali cinematic greats, including Mrinal Sen in Akash Kusum .

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His last big screen outing was 2019's Sanjhbati .

Soumitra Chatterjee's extensive list of awards and honours includes the Padma Bhushan and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Tagore Ratna. He received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award - India's top film honour - in 2012. Mr Chatterjee was the winner of three National Awards for his performances in the films Antardhan, Dekha and Padokkhep . In 2018, he received the Legion of Honour by France, the country's top civilian award. In 1989, Satyajit Ray had also received the same award.

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