Mithun Chakraborty

1950–

Thirty-nine films here, and the catalogue happens to hold both sides of the moment that changed everything for him.

Kismet came out in December 1980. He was a working actor with a National Award for Mrigayaa behind him and no mass following; Bappi Lahiri was a composer with a reputation for borrowing. The two of them are already paired on it and nobody has noticed. Two years later they made Disco Dancer, and it went off - in India, and then in the Soviet Union, where it became one of the most-watched films ever released and made him a household name in a country he had never been to.

After that the range is wide and the quality is not always the point. In Baazi he is Salim, hired as muscle by the villain and changing sides when he works out who actually cut him, opposite Dharmendra. In Bees Saal Baad he is Suraj, a man a dead woman believes was her husband six centuries ago, having nails driven into his feet on successive new moons. In Ghar Ek Mandir he is the youngest of three brothers trying to hold a house. In Watan Ke Rakhwale he stops a wedding by claiming the bride is already married to him.

K. J. Yesudas sings on Kismet, which is worth a second look: one of the great voices of the southern languages, on a Bappi Lahiri Hindi soundtrack in 1980.

Dates and credits from Wikidata.