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Smita Patil (Marathi:स्मिता पाटील) (1955 – 13 December 1986) was a leading Bollywood actress from the 1970s to the 1980s in both Hindi and Marathi cinema.

Smita Patil belongs to a generation of great actresses, including Suhasini Mulay and Shabana Azmi and ,strongly associated with a radically political cinema of the 1970s. Her work includes films with parallel cinema directors like Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani and Mrinal Sen and the more commercial Bollywood cinema of Bombay. Patil was working as a TV news reader and was also an accomplished photographer when Shyam Benegal discovered her.^[1]

She was an alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. In 1977, she won the National Award for 'Best Actress' for her performance in the Hindi film Bhumika. In her films, Patil's character often represents an intelligent femininity that stands in relief against the conventional background of male-dominated cinema (films like Bhumika, Umbartha, and Bazaar). Smita Patil was also a women's rights activist and became famous for her roles in films that portrayed women as capable. In her more commercial films, her glamorous roles reveal the permeable boundaries between 'serious' cinema and 'Bollywood' in the Hindi film industry (films like Shakti and Namak Halaal).

Due to complications from the birth of her son, she died in 1986. She was married to the Hindi film actor Raj Babbar.

Note: Several of her already completed films were released years after her death.

• Nishant (1975)
• Manthan (1977)
• Bhumika (1977)
• Bhavni Bhavai (1980)
• Chakra (1981)
• Shakti (1982)
• Umbartha (1982)
• Bazaar (1982)
• Namak Halaal
• Dard Ka Rishta
• Arth (1983)
• Mandi (1983)
• Haadsa (1983)
• Sadgati (dir. by Satyajit Ray)
• Chidambaram (Malayalam, starring Bharath Gopi) (1986)
• Mirch Masala (1986).

Article on Smita Patil

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