Lalita Pawar

Lalita Pawar Biography

Lalita Pawar was a veteran actress of Bollywood and Marathi cinema, most known for portraying character roles. For television audience, she is remembered most for playing the grey shaded role of Manthara in Ramanand Sagar’s popular television serial, Ramayana in the late 1980’s. In the first phase of her career, she played lead roles in many movies and slowly she moved to character roles. As a character artist, her noted works are Mr and Mrs.55, Anari and Shree 420. She has been associated with numerous Raj Kapoor movies in supporting roles.  ‘Netaji Palkar’ is her noted movie in Marathi films. She spent almost 70 years in Indian film industry and was active till her death in 1998, aged 81.

She was born in Nasik in the year 1916 in an orthodox family. She debut big screen as a child artist with Raja Harishchandra (1928). Later she portrayed numerous movies in lead role in the silent era of Indian cinema. She has also produced a few movies like Duniya Kya Hai and Kailas. In 1942, an incident in the sets changed her life forever. In one of the sequences of Jung-E-Azadi, actor Bhagwan Dada was to slap her. He accidentally slapped her so hard that she was affected with facial paralysis and a burst left eye vein. She went treatment for the next three years and was left with a defective left eye. After that, she switched on to character roles. But the truth is that, she was more successful in these roles than lead roles.

She received Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award in 1959 for Anari. She has played both positive and negative shaded characters. And in most of the movies, she was casted as a wicket mother-in-law in which she was successful most. In 1961, she was honored as the first lady of Indian cinema by the Government of India.

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Updated: March 27, 2014