ambitions, he found a new audience, and he returned to the part in  Welcome Back  (2015). He played a politician in  Raajneeti  (2010).

In Marathi cinema, he won Filmfare Marathi best actor awards for  Dr. Prakash Baba Amte - The Real Hero  (2014) and  Natsamrat  (2016), in which he starred as an aging theater veteran. He was the Hindi voice of Shere Khan in  The Jungle Book  (2016) and appeared opposite Rajinikanth in the Tamil film  Kaala  (2018).

Later credits included  The Vaccine War  (2023),  Vanvaas  (2024) and  Housefull 5  (2025). This year he starred in series  Sankalp  on Amazon MX Player and appeared alongside Shahid Kapoor in  O'Romeo. 

Patekar received the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honor, in 2013. He was commissioned into the Territorial Army in 1988 with the rank of captain. During the 1999 Kargil conflict he was posted with the Maratha Light Infantry, holding the rank of major, and had risen to lieutenant colonel by the time he left in 2013. In 2015 he launched the Naam Foundation alongside Makarand Anaspure to support Maharashtra farmers hit by drought.

His later years were also marked by controversy. Actor Tanushree Dutta accused him in 2008 of harassing her on the set of  Horn  Ok' Pleassss,  and she repeated the allegation in 2018. Her accusations helped spark the #MeToo movement in the Hindi film industry. Mumbai police registered a case against Patekar and three others in October 2018 but filed a closure report in June 2019. Patekar consistently denied the allegations.