India, Oct. 8 -- There are scenes in Parinda where almost nothing happens and everything does. A man speaks softly, barely moves, and a packed cinema hall forgets to breathe. Nobody in that hall would have called Anna Seth a hero. Nobody could look away from him either.

That was Nana Patekar's trick for four decades. He made menace sound like polite conversation, and polite conversation sound like a threat. On Thursday morning, at 75, that voice fell silent in Goa. He was found unconscious at his Dona Paula home in the early hours and declared dead at Manipal Hospital around 5:20 am after a cardiac arrest.

Born Vishwanath Patekar, he came to cinema through theatre, and it showed. The stage teaches an actor that a whisper can carry to th...