The government will give four eminent film personalities — Dilip Kumar, Tapan Sinha, Lata Mangeshkar and Saroja Devi — the ‘one-time award for lifetime achievement’ to commemorate the 60th anniversary of India’s independence.

Born in 1922, Dilip Kumar (aka Yusuf Khan) will be conferred the “One Time Award for Life Time Achievement” in the field of acting.

Starting his career in 1944, Dilip Kumar has starred in some of the biggest commercially successful films from the late 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s.

He was the first actor to receive a Filmfare Best Actor Award and holds the record for most number of Filmfare Awards won for that category. Though he has done all kinds of films – he balanced a wide variety of roles such as the intense Andaz (1949) with the swashbuckling Aan (1952), the dramatic Devdas (1955) with the comical Azaad (1955) and the historical romance Mughal E Azam (1960) with the social Ganga Jamuna (1961).

In the 1970s roles dried up for Kumar and after 1976 he left films for a five year break. In 1981 he returned with a character role in the blockbuster film Kranti and continued his career playing central character roles in hits such as Shakti (1982), Karma (1986) and Saudagar (1991).

He received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1995, apart from getting the highest civilian honour Nisha-e-Imtiaz from the Pakistan Government. He continues to be a living icon for the present generation of film stars.