Anant Nag to Receive Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024 (2026-09-20)

Veteran Kannada actor Anant Nag will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024 on September 22, at the 72nd National Film Awards ceremony in Gujarat. The honour recognises a career in Indian cinema spanning more than five decades. Nag, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan last year, is the second Kannada actor to win the Phalke, after Dr. Rajkumar.

Nag has described his craft in his own distinctive terms, saying he would call it behaving rather than acting. Trained on Mumbai's theatre stages rather than in a film school, he has relied on what he terms behavioural acting — an approach that has allowed him to move with ease between parallel and commercial cinema and across genres, from social drama and romance to comedy and horror.

Born in 1948 in Uttara Kannada district in coastal Karnataka, Nag spent his early childhood in a religious math and an ashram where his parents worked. He moved to Mumbai in his early teens for schooling, a shift he has described as a culture shock, and found his footing in the city's vibrant theatre world of the 1960s and 70s, acting in Konkani, Kannada and Hindi plays.

His transition to cinema came in 1973 with Sankalpa, directed by P.V. Nanjaraje Urs, in which he played a rationalist pitted against religious faith. A year later he was introduced to Shyam Benegal, with whom he worked on six films that remain milestones of Indian new wave cinema of the 1970s and early 80s. The collaboration began with Ankur, where he played the complex-ridden son of a landlord, and continued with Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika, Kondura and Kalyug, offering him a range of roles with grey shades.

Nag has often said his move to commercial cinema followed a realisation that a full-time career in parallel cinema was hard to sustain. Bayalu Daari (1977) was his first major commercial hit as a romantic lead, followed by a string of successes such as Chandanada Gombe, Benkiya Bale and Naa Ninna Bidalare. He played the vulnerable middle-class protagonist in many of these films, several based on popular novels, and his on-screen pairing with Lakshmi was a particular hit. He was popular in an era of superstars such as Rajkumar, Vishnuvardhan and Ambarish, whose fan clubs often competed with one another, but despite his own large following he steered clear of that phenomenon — partly, perhaps, because he was never an action hero, and partly because he defied being cast in a mould.

An important phase of his career was his work with his younger brother Shankar Nag, a maverick talent of Kannada film and theatre who died in an accident in 1990. Films they made together, including Accident, Minchina Ota and Nodi Swami Navirode Heege, retain a unique place in Kannada cinema, while the television series Malgudi Days, based on R.K. Narayan's works, won them national recognition in the early years of television. Nag wrote poignantly about this association in his memoir, Nanna Thamma Shankara.

After a lean period in the late 1990s, Nag continued to act through the 2000s, mostly in supporting roles, in films such as Mungaru Male. He returned to key roles in films including Godhi Banna Sadharana Maikattu, with a stellar performance as an Alzheimer's patient, and Kavalu Daari, where he plays a retired police inspector.

Nag is also among the few Kannada actors to have successfully dabbled in politics. Influenced by the JP Movement of the 1970s and persuaded by the late Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde to join mainstream politics, he was nominated to the Karnataka Legislative Council in 1988 and later elected to the Legislative Assembly. In 1996, he became Bangalore Development Minister in the J.H. Patel government. He quit politics, by his own admission, when it began to demand his full attention, away from cinema.

Nag has never shied away from expressing his political views. He has been an unabashed admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in recent years and has endorsed Hindutva politics on many occasions, drawing criticism from liberal circles in Karnataka. Asked to comment on the Phalke award, Nag said the congratulatory post on X from the Prime Minister felt as good as getting two Phalke awards.