KOLKATA: Veteran actress Sharmila Tagore, who was in Kolkata on Friday to attend the premiere of ‘Puratwan’ said it might be her last Bengali film as she hasn’t been keeping well. “Acting needs a certain level of physical fitness and I’m not keeping well,” said the actress, who made her debut in Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’ at the age of 14 in 1959. Recently, her daughter, Soha, said how the veteran actress quietly battled cancer in 2023.
The graceful Tagore fondly recalled watching the restored version of Ray’s ‘Nayak’ (1966), where she starred opposite Uttam Kumar. When Millennium Post asked about Ray’s ‘Sonar Kella’ being screened at Nandan — a cultural hub named by the maestro himself — where her own new Bengali film is also playing, she smiled and said: “I watched the restored version of Nayak in Delhi. When I acted in it back in 1966, I used to think maybe I wasn’t good enough. But seeing it now on the big screen, I feel I did pretty well,” smiled the two-time National Award-winning actress.
Directed by Suman Ghosh, ‘Puratawn’ stars Rituparna Sengupta, who also turns producer for the film. The project marks the ‘Devi’ actress’ return to Bengali cinema after 14 years.