Rohini Hattangadi: The First Indian Actor To Win A BAFTA Award

Rohini Hattangadi, India's first BAFTA-winning actor: The nominations for the 74th British Academy Film Awards were announced last night, and Priyanka Chopra sadly couldn't make the cut, even after being longlisted for her performance in Netflix's The White Tiger. However, this marks the perfect occasion for us to talk about the actor, who not only made the cut but also became the first in her league to lift a BAFTA trophy- Marathi veteran actor Rohini Hattangadi.

Rohini Hattangadi is the first actor and only female actor so far, to have won a BAFTA award, for her performance in the 1982 film Gandhi. Yes, the same film that starred Ben Kingsley in the lead and picked up eight Academy Awards, including that of Best Picture and Best Actor. That year, Meryl Streep won the Best Actress trophy at the Oscars for her iconic performance in Sophie's Choice.

At the age of 27, Hattangadi, a National School of Drama graduate, played Kasturba Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, right from her youth to the age of 74. To star alongside Ben Kingsley and win a BAFTA may sound surreal, but only if you are not acquainted with Hattangadi's formidable body of work. She is a theatre artist par excellence and I am not the correct person to explore that. So let us talk about her films and television work which made Hattangadi a household name.

The first performance of Rohini Hattangadi that I became privy to was on a Sony TV show called Mahayagya, a political drama featuring known names such as Govind Namdeo, Ananya Khare and Kumud Mishra. She played the scrupulous politician Vimla Pandey who is out to settle scores with her political rival. However, her most memorable performance, which I have revisited multiple times, is in Govind Nihalani's 1984 political satire Party, which won Hattangadi a National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Party featured critically acclaimed and seasoned actors such as Amrish Puri, Om Puri, Vijaya Mehta, Manohar Singh, Naseeruddin Shah, Deepa Sahi and Ila Arun. And yet, it is Hattangadi's performance as a celebrated playwright's wife, yearning for his love and attention, that takes your breath away. In every scene that Hattangadi features, she owns the frame.

While Party remains a film only popular among the lovers of a certain kind of cinema, there are several contemporary films, in which Hattangadi's work was noted, such as Arth, Saaransh and then the more commercially renowned ChaalBaaz,  Agneepath and Munnabhai MBBS.

Like it was with most actors working in "parallel cinema" at that time, Hattangadi did not receive the public attention and love that she deserved, leaving her cornered to what is famously referred to as character roles. Although, now thanks to the internet and OTT, we can relive the work of numerous artists like her and cherish their skills and applaud them for the breakthroughs that they have achieved in their field. Here's to Rohini Hattangadi, who gave India its first BAFTA in acting and continues to contribute to the field as a film, television and theatre artist even today.

The views expressed are the author's own.