It’s not my habit to yell actors’ names out loud at my TV screen when they enter a film but that is my customary greeting for Pran, 2013’s winner of the Dada Saheb Phalke award. Although he is known best to many film fans as one of the all-time great villains, he’s not someone I love to hate, the way I do, say, creepy Jeevan, wild Amrish Puri, or hammy Ajit. Pran is an actor I love to love because he is, simply, just that: an actor. He’s never cardboard and never sleepwalks through a performance, even after more than 400 roles, many of which start to look similar if you were to list the basic attributes of the characters. When his name appears in the credits, you know that there will be at least one reliably interesting and thoughtful performance in the film. He can menace a heroine with steely brutishness that feels disarmingly reel but he is just as effective as a sort of a noble loner in a track that parallels the hero’s story or as an enemy who winds up a brother-in-arms of the side of right. Several articles noted when the actor was awarded the Phalke that Pran, “Bollywood’s Black Gold,” as NDTV calls him, inspired new respect for villains from the film industry (DNA).