Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; Bengali: [ˈʃou̯mitːɾo ˈt͡ʃɔʈːopadʱːae̯] ⓘ; 19 January 1935 – 15 November 2020)[2] was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet.

Starting with his debut film, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), the third part of The Apu Trilogy, as adult Apu, he went on to work in several films with Ray, including Abhijan (The Expedition, 1962), Charulata (1964), Kapurush (1965), Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1969), Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Sonar Kella (The Fortress of Gold, 1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1978) as Feluda, Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980), Ghare Baire (The Home and The World, 1984), Shakha Proshakha (1990) and Ganashatru (Enemy of the People, 1989).

He also worked with other noted directors of Bengali cinema, such as Mrinal Sen in Akash Kusum (Up in the Clouds, 1965); Tapan Sinha in Kshudhita Pashan (Hungry Stones, 1960), Jhinder Bandi (1961); Asit Sen in Swaralipi (1961), Ajoy Kar in Parineeta (1969), and Tarun Mazumdar in Ganadevata (1978).

His grandfather was the president of one such group while his father, though lawyer by profession and later a government worker, also worked as an amateur actor.

Encouraged by the praise he received for his acting in school plays, gradually his interest in theatre grew with passing years.

[6] He was a very close friend of famous theatre personality, Mrityunjay Sil who is often regarded as a key influence on his career.

[12][13][10] Meanwhile, he was rejected in his screen test for Bengali film, Nilachale Mahaprabhu (1957) directed by Kartik Chattopadhyay.

[14] Despite being selected, as a debutant actor, Chatterjee was nevertheless unsure of his career choice and especially his looks, as he didn't consider himself photogenic.

In fact Ray believed with a beard Chatterjee looked like young poet laureate Tagore.

His centrality to Ray's work is akin to other key collaborations in the history of cinema — Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa, Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini, De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman, Jerzy Stuhr and Krzysztof Kieślowski, Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog.

Soumitra featured as Feluda/Pradosh Chandra Mitter, the famous private investigator from Calcutta in Ray's Feluda series of books, in two films in the 1970s Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979).

[20] Besides working with Ray, Soumitra excelled in collaborations with other well-known Bengali directors such as Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha.

He was equally confident in playing the swashbuckling horse-riding villain in Tapan Sinha's Jhinder Bandi (1961) giving the legendary Uttam Kumar a tough challenge.

Besides films, Chatterjee continued acting in Kolkata-based Bengali theatre, and also published over 12 poetry books.

[21] Entering the 1980s and 1990s, he started working with contemporary directors, like Goutam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Anjan Das and Rituparno Ghosh, and even acted on television.

He even recalled using film's catch-phrase "Fight-Koni-fight" in hard times, as a chant to himself to lift his "aging spirits".

The movie was released in April 2022 posthumously as a tribute to Soumitra featuring Jisshu Sengupta who portrayed the younger self of the late artist.

Besides acting, he has written and directed several plays, translated a few and also branched out to poetry reading in recent decades.

[26] He has been the subject of a full-length documentary named Gaach by French film director Catherine Berge.

[27] Incidentally, besides receiving eight awards from the Bengal Film Journalists' Association for the best actor[28] and international recognition for his acting prowess, Chatterjee never won a National Film Award for acting in the early part of his career, which established his reputation as an actor, working with directors like Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen.

He was kept on BiPAP support and invasive ventilation for in the critical times; after his improvement in health, the treatment mechanisms were changed.