It is extremely rare for an Indian actor to win the most prestigious award in Indian cinema — the National Film Award for Best Actor — with his very first role. A young Mithun Chakraborty achieved that with Mrigayaa, directed by the legendary Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen and released in 1976. Now a much older Mithun Chakraborty, with an illustrious career spanning mainstream blockbusters and acclaimed arthouse films to his name, is the 2024 recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the lifetime achievement award in Indian cinema.
Talking about this award in Kolkata today, the actor said, “I only wish to tell everyone that if I have reached this far, why can’t you?”
Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw in a post on X informed that Mithun Chakraborty had been named the recipient. Following this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today lauded Chakraborty as a cultural icon.
Chakraborty said that he was dedicating this honour to his family and countless well-wishers and fans.
Addressing young actors, he said, “You (the aspiring actors) should have the dedication and motivation. You should have the resilience to face difficult situations and keep doing your work. I can be the example.”
Asked about the wishes of PM Modi, Chakraborty said, “I am thanking him for the wishes and greetings; he and everyone else who had wished me.”
To a question about his earlier stint as a Rajya Sabha MP from the ruling Trinamool Congress party in West Bengal, the actor said, “I had stepped down long back and I am no more the MP. I am an actor who is also involved in social work for the people.”
About murmurs that his current association with the Bharatiya Janata Party might be a factor behind the award, Chakraborty said, “I am associated with [the] BJP. But I have worked in the [film] industry in all these decades and got the love of the people.”
Chakraborty, after his award-winning debut in the Bengali film Mrigayaa, went on to become a superstar who delivered a string of Hindi blockbusters, such as Surakshaa, Disco Dancer, Dance Dance, and Pyar Jhukta Nahi.
He won the National Film Award for Best Actor also for Tahader Katha (1992), and then won a National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Ramakrishna Paramhansa in Swami Vivekananda (1998).
Besides these, Chakraborty has won innumerable awards for his multifaceted cinema work. One of his most memorable roles is that of the whimsical but upright media mogul Manik Dasgupta in Mani Ratnam’s Guru, a film starring Abhishek Bachchan in the title role, said to be loosely based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani. Chakraborty’s work in Guru (2007) won him countless award nominations.
He remains one of the best national-level representatives of cinematic talent from West Bengal.
On an unrelated note, to a question about the RG Kar rape-murder of a junior doctor inside the hospital — a gruesome crime that has infuriated the people of Bengal — and the ongoing investigations, Chakraborty said today, “Like everyone else, I was shaken by this incident. We all want [that] all those behind [this] barbaric crime be tracked and punished promptly. If that is delayed or does not happen, then the issue of women’s safety will never be ensured.”
—With inputs by CtoI News Desk
