Anjali Patil is an Indian actress known for her work across Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu cinema, as well as international independent productions. She came to wider notice through socially engaged and parallel cinema, often portraying intense, grounded characters drawn from rural and working-class settings.
| Name | Anjali Patil |
|---|---|
| Profession | Actress |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Languages of work | Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu |
| Training | National School of Drama, New Delhi |
Patil hails from Maharashtra and developed her craft through theatre before moving into films. She trained at the National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi, an institution that has shaped a number of contemporary Indian screen actors. Her stage background informs a screen style noted for restraint and naturalism.
Patil's feature debut came in With You, Without You (2012), a Sri Lankan film directed by Prasanna Vithanage and based on a Dostoevsky novella, which travelled the international festival circuit. She followed this with Prakash Jha's Chakravyuh (2012), a Hindi film set against the backdrop of left-wing extremism in central India, in which she played a Maoist sympathiser.
She subsequently appeared in independent and mainstream projects, including Delhi in a Day (2011) and the Tamil film Kaadu. In Telugu cinema she featured in Naa Bangaaru Talli (2014), a film addressing human trafficking, directed by Rajesh Touchriver. She played a significant role in Newton (2017), Amit V. Masurkar's satirical drama on elections in a conflict zone, which was India's official entry to the Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film category that year.
Patil expanded into pan-Indian projects with the Tamil film Kaala (2018), directed by Pa. Ranjith and starring Rajinikanth, in which she played one of the central female characters. She has also appeared in Malayalam cinema and continued to take on roles in independent films and series.
Patil is associated with a generation of Indian actors who move fluidly between regional industries and independent cinema, often choosing roles in films that engage with political and social subjects such as displacement, electoral democracy, caste, and rural distress. Her career reflects the broader expansion of multilingual casting in Indian films during the 2010s.