A celebrity was created in Bengali cinema when Soumitra Chatterjee made her acting debut in Satyajit Ray's 1959 film Apur Sansar, the concluding instalment of Ray's Apu trilogy. Soon after leaving the Bengali cinema industry, Soumitra gained international acclaim and was likened to the greatest in the profession, including Marcello Mastroianni and Max von Sydow. Famously known as "Ray's actor," Soumitra collaborated with nearly all Bengali directors who were worth their salt during the course of a six-decade career, including Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Chidananda Dasgupta, Aparna Sen, Tarun Majumdar, Rituparno Ghosh, and Goutam Ghose, to mention a few. In 1960, Soumitra took the lead role in another Ray movie, Devi, which came after Apur Sansar. More than 300 movies were produced between that time and the posthumously released Abhijan and Belashuru (2022). The first thorough attempt to depict the actor's life in all of its facets is Soumitra Chatterjee: His Life in Cinema and Beyond. It follows Soumitra from his early years of identity exploration to his later decades, when he achieved the zenith of his profession as an artist and actor. Film journalist Amitava Nag's intimate portrayal of the star actor and his work outside of performing, which was written from the perspective of someone who had an extraordinarily close relationship with the actor, will be required reading for his hordes of followers and for anybody with an interest in movies.