The actor, who died of cardiac arrest in Goa on Thursday at 75, built a fortune from a Mumbai poster-painting job that paid 35 rupees a month and one meal a day.
Nana Patekar died at 5.20 am on Thursday after suffering a cardiac arrest at his residence in Goa, where he had gone to attend an event, Dr Shekhar Salkar, chief of oncology at Manipal Hospital, told ANI. He was 75. In the hours since, attention has turned to a life that moved from near-destitution to an estimated Rs 50-80 crore fortune, according to Koimoi.
The numbers only matter because of where he started. Patekar told Rediff in 2015 that his father's business had collapsed when he was young, and the family struggled to manage even one meal a day. He took a job painting Bollywood posters for 35 rupees a month, walking 8 km to work each way. A move into theatre bumped his pay to 50 rupees a show. Decades later, he reportedly charged Rs 4 crore for 2026's O Romeo.
That arc, 35 rupees to crores, is the whole story in miniature.
Patekar debuted in 1978's Gaman and spent the late '80s building a reputation in Marathi cinema before Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay and his National Award-winning turn in Parinda put him on a different trajectory. He went on to collect three National Awards and two Maharashtra State Film Awards across a career that included Prahaar (which he also wrote and directed), Krantiveer, Ab Tak Chhappan, Welcome and Raajneeti. More recently he appeared in Housefull 5, O Romeo and Subedar. In his later years he was commanding Rs 2-3 crore a film, per Koimoi's reporting.
What he did with the money tells its own story. For most of his adult life Patekar lived in a roughly 750 sq ft one-bedroom flat in Mumbai's Andheri, bought decades ago for Rs 1.1 lakh and now reportedly worth close to Rs 3 crore. He also held a Goa house, a Law College Road property in Pune, and a 27-acre Pune farmhouse with seven rooms and a large hall where he reportedly grew wheat and paddy, selling the produce across Maharashtra and splitting the earnings with farmhands and local farmers. His garage, by most accounts, ran to a BMW X6, an Audi Q5 and a Mahindra Jeep, modest by industry standards.
Patekar avoided brand endorsements for most of his career and only began taking them up in 2012, at 61, reportedly charging around Rs 1 crore per ad for names like Tata Sky and CenturyPly.
The NAAM Foundation, which he co-founded with Makarand Anaspure in 2015 to support drought-hit farming families, may end up being the more lasting figure in his ledger. In 2015 alone, the foundation distributed 15,000 cheques to 62 families in Vidarbha and extended help to 113 more in Latur and Osmanabad. Tributes from across the industry continued through Thursday, with details of his final rites yet to be confirmed.
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