70 reasons to love Amitabh Bachchan
Grand plans are in store for megastar Amitabh Bachchan who turns 70 today. Wife Jaya Bachchan and ad guru Piyush Pandey have conceptualised an art show called B Seventy, where leading artists like Akbar Padamsee, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Badri Narayan, Gieve Patel, Manu Parekh, Paresh Maity and many others have created artworks dedicated to the actor. Also, a coffee table book on the art works will be launched during the exhibition.
Bachchan favourites Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla have designed a special birthday outfit for Big B. Here's a look Mr Bachchan's extraordinary journey.
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Grand plans are in store for megastar Amitabh Bachchan who turns 70 today. Wife Jaya Bachchan and ad guru Piyush Pandey have conceptualised an art show called B Seventy, where leading artists like Akbar Padamsee, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Badri Narayan, Gieve Patel, Manu Parekh, Paresh Maity and many others have created artworks dedicated to the actor. Also, a coffee table book on the art works will be launched during the exhibition.
Bachchan favourites Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla have designed a special birthday outfit for Big B. Here's a look Mr Bachchan's extraordinary journey. -
Born in the tumultuous year of 1942, Amitabh Bachchan was almost named Inquilab by his freedom fighter parents, renowned poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Teji. After a family friend intervened, the name Amitabh was chosen. His name means 'the light that will never go off.'
But to his parents, he was also Munna, the child, even though he would soon find himself playing big brother to Ajitabh. -
Amitabh Bachchan is perhaps the most famous alumnus of Nainital's Sherwood College, and later Delhi University's Kirori Mal College, where he was actively involved in theatre. At the time, acting wasn't a priority for young Amit - who aspired to be an engineer or an officer with the Indian Air Force.
Alas, his dreams remained just that, and he found himself in Kolkata working with Shaw Wallace Breweries, followed by a stint with the shipping firm Bird & Co. as a freight broker. -
The baritone voice that was to be his trademark later left All India Radio unimpressed. In a moment of irony, his voice was deemed too heavy for radio and he was shown the door after auditioning for the post of newsreader. Now, the actor's voice has become a part of cinematic lore as one of the most recognisable and mimicked in Indian cinema.
Adding salt to a young man's wounds, he didn't even qualify in the preliminary round of a talent contest held by Filmfare, and a dejected Amit left the comforts of Kolkata to join his parents in Delhi. -
On February 16, 1969, Amitabh moved to Mumbai to try his luck as an actor and, with no place to stay, Big B spent many nights on the benches skirting Marine Drive. For a while he did radio spots that earned him Rs 50 a month and morphed into the narrator's role in Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan Shome.
In a 1999 interview, Mr Bachchan admitted that at the time, he had a driving license and if his dream had failed, he would have resorted to the life of a cab driver. -
But when his brother Ajitabh informed him that director K A Abbas was looking for a fresh face for his film Saat Hindustani, Amitabh arrived at the director's doorstep armed with a letter of introduction from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, mother of his good friend Rajiv. He was cast as Muslim poet Anwar Ali Anwar and won the National Award for Best Newcomer in 1970. But despite this initial breakthrough, leading roles were hard to come by for the tall, dark but not conventionally handsome Amitabh.
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The year 1971 saw six films that featured Big B, including the Rajesh Khanna starrer Anand that won Mr Bachchan the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award for his performance as Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee, the Bengali doctor fondly referred to as "Babu Moshai" by Rajesh Khanna's Anand Sehgal.
But even Anand offered no respite from the black hole Big B's career was languishing in even before it had taken off. He did some more bit roles and again took the microphone as a narrator in the Rajesh Khanna starrer Bawarchi (1972). Some misses followed, including the 1973 film Saudagar alongside Nutan and Padma Khanna. -
And just as it seemed that the actor's foray into films was falling in deep waters, 1973 changed it all with the birth of the Angry Young Man in Prakash Mehra's Zanjeer. A dejected Amitabh Bachchan famously almost took the train back to Allahabad when he was cast in Zanjeer, courtesy a recommendation from the film's script-writers Salim-Javed, by director Mehra who had been turned down by Dev Anand and Raaj Kumar.
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His personal life was deeply entwined with his professional journey, for a romance that began on the sets of 1972's Ek Nazar became the love story scripted in the best Bollywood fashion. The young couple were married on June 3, 1973 following the success of Zanjeer.
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And another milestone in his career came in 1975 with Deewaar, in which Amitabh Bachchan's role was loosely based on the life of underworld don Haji Mastan.
Film lore has it that the actor met Haji Mastan before the shooting and was so impressed by the don's moist eyes that he tried to emulate them in the film. -
But Zanjeer and Deewaar were both eclipsed by what is the defining film of Indian cinema as well its biggest blockbuster, Sholay. The megawatt performances, the riveting action, Salim-Javed's story and the larger than life Gabbar Singh made Sholay the legendary movie it is, taking Big B to the highest rung of the filmi ladder.
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The 1976 movie Do Anjaane saw Amitabh Bachchan paired with Rekha, a combination that would give many more hits in the years to come. And while they set the silver screen ablaze with their on-screen chemistry, rumours of an unacknowledged off-screen romance lingered for years.
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The actor's association with Yash Chopra delivered big successes such as Deewaar (1975), Kabhie Kabhie (1976) and Trishul (1978), but their off-beat take on the Chasnala mining disaster of 1975 - Kaala Patthar (1979) - didn't quite match up to the earlier successes.
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While Mr Bachchan's reported infidelity continued to make headlines, Yash Chopra managed to do the impossible. He brought together the rumoured pati, patni aur woh trio - Amitabh, Jaya and Rekha - to act together in his movie Silsila in 1981, playing the roles they had allegedly assumed in real life. This was Big B and Rekha's last movie together.
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Another unprecedented hit was the 1983 film Coolie, but what really united the nation was Big B's near fatal injury on the sets of the film. During the shooting of Coolie, Amitabh Bachchan was seriously injured in an action sequence, where Puneet Issar accidentally punched Big B too hard.
The entire country added their prayers to those of Jaya's who walked barefoot to Siddhi Vinayak Temple everyday and Mr Bachchan finally made a full recovery. Director Manmohan Desai changed the ending of the film to keep Big B's character alive rather than have him die saying that the man who had cheated death in real life deserved no less. -
By the late 1980s Mr Bachchan's career had all but stalled. He dabbled with the non-mainstream genre with Main Azaad Hoon (1989), but it was the 1990 blockbuster Agneepath that jumpstarted his star status once again. His portrayal of the underworld don Vijay Dinanath Chauhan won him his second National Award, this time for Best Actor.
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But Agneepath's glory was brief. With his career graph dipping, Amitabh Bachchan turned to politics at the behest of his friend Rajiv Gandhi. He contested from the Allahabad seat on a Congress ticket and defeated the formidable H N Bahuguna, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in a landslide victory. But the actor and his brother Ajitabh got embroiled in the Bofors scandal and he resigned from the Lok Sabha in 1987. Mr Bachchan was eventually cleared of all charges.
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Some hit movies followed, like Hum in 1991, but they were few and far between. The '90s were marked by more misses than hits. Even Mukul Anand's Khuda Gawah, failed to impress at the box office. Though the previously shot Insaniyat was released in 1994, it sank without a trace, and soon Big B declared a state of semi-retirement.
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It was at this time that Mr Bachchan set up his ill fated company - Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL) - and he turned producer with Tere Mere Sapne (1996), a box office dud. In 1997, Mr Bachchan decided to give acting another shot with his home production Mrityudaata, a film that recast Big B in his old action hero ways. Alas, he failed to even create a glimmer of magic. But the trouble was just beginning.
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ABCL brought the Miss World competition to India in 1996. But, after protests, cases of employees being overpaid and other big issues piling up with the entire event, Amitabh Bachchan and ABCL were left in the red.
The consequent legal battles surrounding ABCL drove the company into the ground, to the point that in April 1999, the Bombay High Court had to restrain Mr Bachchan from selling his new Mumbai bungalow Prateeksha along with a few other properties to recover the losses. He mortgaged the properties instead. -
But while the Angry Young Man had been laid to rest, Big B was not done. As the millennium changed, so did his luck. The year 2000 brought with it a blockbuster hit in the form of Aditya Chopra's Mohabbatein, co-starring Shah Rukh Khan, and a job hosting the Indian version of game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
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If TV resurrected the Bachchan mystique, Bollywood lost no time in cashing in. Hence, the 2000s triggered off some notable films for Big B that included Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), Khakee (2004) and Dev (2004), but not without some duds too, like Boom (2003).
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In 2005, Amitabh was hospitalised and had to undergo surgery for diverticulitis of the small intestine. He was in the middle of his Kaun Banega Crorepati season 2 shoot - where he had completed 61 of the 85 episodes.
Once he had fully recovered, the new season of the show was being anchored by SRK, but for Mr Bachchan a new opportunity presented itself - the reality show Bigg Boss 3. And if reports hold true, he charged Rs 126 crores to host the season. -
In July this year, the veteran actor took part in the London Olympic torch relay and carried the flame. "Never ever dreamed that I'd do something like this. One is watching the Olympics, everything that goes around it ever since you were a kid and now you suddenly find yourself to be a part of it and a very prominent part," he said in an interview.
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In February 2012, Amitabh Bachchan underwent abdominal surgery again. After being discharged from the hospital, he thanked his fans for the well wishes. "God bless the well-wishers. God bless them for their permanence in my life. God bless their consistency, their love and enthusiasm. I am indebted for life. It is a debt I shall never be able to repay; the one burden that shall remain with me unattended. One burden that shall make me happy," Mr Bachchan wrote on his blog.
