11-10-2008 1:15pm Yesterday was the Birthday of Shri Amitabh Bachchan. I was just changing my TV channels as i come across with the news that Mr. Bachchan was critically ill and admitted to Nanavati hospital due to the same stomachache problem. This was the bad news for all the fans of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. Well in November 2005, Amitabh Bachchan was admitted to Lilavati Hospital’s ICU once more, to undergo surgery for diverticulitis of the small intestine. This occurred after Amitabh Bachchan complained of pains in his abdomen some days prior. During the period and that following his recovery, most of his projects were put on hold, including the television show he was in the process of hosting, Kaun Banega Crorepati. Amitabh returned to work in March 2006. I hope and look forward to see him in his best of health and wish he would get well soon.

Amitabh Harivansh Srivastav born on October 11, 1942birth place.

), is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s and has since become one of the most prominent figures in the history of Indian cinema.

Amitabh Bachchan has won numerous major awards in his career, including three National Film Awards and twelve Filmfare Awards. He holds the record for most number of Best Actor nominations at the Filmfare Awards. In addition to acting, Amitabh Bachchan has worked as a playback singer, film producer, and television presenter, and was an elected member of the Indian Parliament from 1984 to 1987.

Amitabh Bachchan is married to actor Jaya Bhaduri, now Mrs. Jaya Amitabh Bachchan They has two children, Shweta Nanda and Abhishek Amitabh Bachchan , who is also an actor and is married to Aishwarya Rai.(Amitabh & Abhishek)

Mrs. Jaya bachchan,Abhishek & Amitabh Bachchan)

Born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, Amitabh Bachchan hails from a Hindu Kayastha family. His father, Dr. Harivansh Rai Amitabh Bachchan was a well-known Hindi poet, while his mother, Teji Bachchan was a Sikh from Karachi (now in Pakistan). Amitabh was initially named Inquilab, inspired from the phrase Inquilab Zindabad, during the Indian independence struggle, but was re-christened Amitabh, which means, “the light that would never go off.” Though his surname was Srivastava, his father had adopted the pen-name Amitabh Bachchan , under which he published all his works. It is with this last name that Amitabh debuted in films, and, for all public purposes, it has become the surname of all members of his current family.

Amitabh is the elder of Harivansh Rai Amitabh Bachchan ‘s two sons, the second being Ajitabh. His mother had a keen interest in theatre and had been offered a role in a film, but preferred her domestic duties. She had some degree of influence in Amitabh Bachchan ‘s choice of career because she always insisted that he should take the centre stage. Amitabh Bachchan ’s father passed away in 2003 and his mother on December 21, 2007.

Amitabh Bachchan has a double M.A. (Master of Arts) degree. He attended Allahabad’s Jnana Prabodhini and Boys’ High School (BHS), followed by Nainital’s Sherwood College, where he majored in the art stream. He later went on to study at Kirori Mal College of the University of Delhi and completed a Bachelor of Science degree. In his twenties, Amitabh Bachchan gave up a job as freight broker for the shipping firm, Bird and Co., based in Calcutta, to pursue a career in acting.

Shweta & Abhishek

He married actor Jaya Bhaduri on June 3, 1973, according to Bengali rites. The couple has two children: daughter Shweta and son Abhishek.

Amitabh Bachchan in Anand (1970) Amitabh Bachchan made his film debut in 1969 as one of the seven protagonists in Saat Hindustani, a film directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and featuring Utpal Dutt, Madhu and Jalal Agha. Though the film was not a financial success, Amitabh Bachchan won his first National Film Award for Best Newcomer.

National Award

Abhishek & Amitabh

The critically acclaimed and commercially successful Anand (1971) followed, where he starred alongside Rajesh Khanna. Amitabh Bachchan roles as a doctor with a cynical view of life garned him a Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award. Amitabh then played the role of an infatuated lover in Parwaana (1971) opposite Navin Nischol, Yogeeta Bali and Om Prakash and was a rare instance of him portraying the villain. This was followed by several films which were not particularly successful at the box office including Reshma Aur Shera (1971). During this time, he made a guest appearance in the film Guddi which starred his future wife Jaya Bhaduri opposite Dharmendra. Noted for his deep baritone voice early on in his career, he narrated part of the film Bawarchi. In 1972, he made an appearance in the road action comedy Bombay to Goa, directed by S. Ramanathan. He starred alongside actors such as Aruna Irani, Mehmood, Anwar Ali, and Nasir Hussain.

1973 saw significant development in Amitabh Bachchan career when director Prakash Mehra cast him in the leading role for the film Zanjeer (1973) as Inspector Vijay Khanna. The film was a sharp contrast to the romantically themed films that had generally preceded it and established Amitabh in a new persona & dash; the “angry young man” action hero of Bollywood, a reputation he was to acquire in pictures that followed it. It was his first film as the leading protagonist to achieve box office success and earned him a Filmfare Nomination for Best Actor. 1973 was also the year he married Jaya and around this time they appeared in several films together, not only in Zanjeer but in films such as Abhimaan which followed and was released only a month after their marriage. Later, Amitabh Bachchan played the role of Vikram in the film Namak Haraam, a social drama directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and scripted by Biresh Chatterjee addressing themes of friendship. His supporting role opposite Rajesh Khanna and Rekha was praised and won him the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award.

In 1974, Amitabh Bachchan made several guest appearances in films such as Kunwara Baap and Dost, before playing a supporting role in the highest grossing film of that year, Roti Kapda Aur Makaan. The film, directed and written by Manoj Kumar, addressed themes of honesty in the face of oppression and financial and emotional hardship was a critical and commercial success, placing Amitabh opposite Manoj Kumar himself, Shashi Kapoor, and Zeenat Aman. Amitabh Bachchan then played the leading role in film Majboor, released on December 6, 1974, which was a remake of the Hollywood film Zigzag starring George Kennedy. The film was only a moderate success at the box office. In 1975, he starred in a variety of film genres from the comedy Chupke Chupke, the crime drama Faraar to the romantic drama Mili. However 1975 was the year when he appeared in two films which are regarded as important in Hindi cinematic history. He starred in the Yash Chopra directed film Deewar, opposite Shashi Kapoor, Nirupa Roy, and Neetu Singh, which earned him a Filmfare Nomination for Best Actor. The film became a major hit at the box office in 1975, ranking in at number 4. Movies ranks Deewaar amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films. Released on August 15, 1975 was Sholay (meaning fire), which became the highest grossing film of all time in India, earning Rs. 2,36,45,00,000 equivalent to US$ 60 million, after adjusting for inflation. Amitabh Bachchan played the role of Jaidev opposite a cast, which included some of the top names in the industry including Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bhaduri, and Amjad Khan. In 1999, BBC India declared it the “Film of the Millennium” and like Deewar, has been cited as amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films. In that same year, the judges of the 50th annual Filmfare awards awarded it with the special distinction award called Filmfare Best Film of 50 Years.

Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970sAfter the success of films such as Sholay at the box office, Amitabh Bachchan had now consilidated his position in the industry and from 1976 through to 1984 would receive an unprecedented number of Filmfare Best Actor Award Awards and nominations. Although films such as Sholay cemented his status as Bollywood’s pre-eminent action hero, Amitabh Bachchan illustrated that he was flexible in other roles, successfully playing the romantic lead, in films such as Kabhie Kabhie (1976) and comic timing in comedies such as Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) and earlier, in Chupke Chupke (1975). In 1976, director Yash Chopra once again cast him in his second film, Kabhi Kabhie, a romantic tale in which Amitabh Bachchan starred as a young poet named Amit Malhotra who falls deeply in love with a beautiful young girl named Pooja played by actor Rakhee Gulzar. The emotional eclectic of the dialogue and softness of the subject matter proved a direct contrast to some of Amitabh’s earlier grittier action pictures and those he would later go on to play. The film saw him again nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award and was a box office success. In 1977, he won the Filmfare Best Actor Award for his performance in Amar Akbar Anthony where he played the third lead opposite Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor as Anthony Gonsalves. 1978 was possibly the most accoladed year of his career and he starred in all four of the highest grossing films of India in that year. He once again resumed double roles in films such as Kasme Vaade as Amit and Shankar and Don playing the characters of Don, a leader of an underworld gang and his look alike Vijay. His performance won him the Filmfare Best Actor Award and considerable critical acclaim as with his performances in Trishul and Muqaddar Ka Sikander which both earned him further Filmfare Best Actor nominations. On account of this unprecedented run and success he encountered at this stage in his career, he was billed a “one-man industry” by the French director Francois Truffaut.

In 1979, for the first time, Amitabh was required to use his singing voice for the film Mr. Natwarlal in which he starred alongside Rekha. His performance in the film saw him nominated for both the Filmfare Best Actor Award and the Filmfare Best Male Playback Awards. In 1979, he also received Best Actor nomination for Kaala Patthar (1979) and then went on to be nominated again in 1980 for the Raj Khosla directed film Dostana, in which he starred opposite Shatrughan Sinha and Zeenat Aman. Dostana proved to be the top grossing film of 1980. In 1981, he starred in Yash Chopra’s melodrama film Silsila, where he starred alongside his wife Jaya and rumoured lover Rekha. Other films of this period include Ram Balram (1980), Shaan (1980), Lawaaris (1981), and Shakti (1982) which pitted him against legendary actor Dilip Kumar.

While filming Coolie in 1982, Amitabh Bachchan suffered a nearly fatally intestinal injury during the filming of a fight scene with co-actor Puneet Issar. Amitabh Bachchan was performing his own stunts in the film and one scene required him to fall onto a table and then on the ground. However as he jumped towards the table, the corner of the table struck his abdomen, resulting in a splenic rupture from which he lost a significant amount of blood. He required an emergency splenectomy and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, at times close to death. The public response included prayers in temples and offers to sacrifice limbs to save him, while later, there were long queues of well-wishing fans outside the hospital where he was recuperating. Nevertheless, he spent many months recovering and resumed filming later that year after a long period of recuperation. The film was released in 1983, and partly due to the huge publicity of Amitabh Bachchan’s accident, the film was a box office success. The director, Manmohan Desai, altered the ending of Coolie after Amitabh Bachchan ‘s accident. Amitabh Bachchan’s character was originally intended to have been killed off but after the change of script, the character lived in the end. It would have been inappropriate, said Desai, for the man who had just fended off death in real life to be killed on screen. Also, in the released film the footage of the fight scene is frozen at the critical moment, and a caption appears onscreen marking this as the instant of the actor’s injury of the accident.

Later, he was diagnosed with Myasthenia gravis. His illness made him feel weak both mentally and physically and he decided to quit films and venture into politics. At this time he became pessimistic, expressing concern with how a new film would be received. Before every release he would negatively state, “Yeh film to flop hogi!” (“This film will flop”).

In 1984, Amitabh took a break from acting and briefly entered politics in support of long-time family friend, Rajiv Gandhi. He contested Allahabad’s Lok Sabha seat against H. N. Bahuguna, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and won by the highest victory margin in general election history (68.2% of the vote). His political career, however, was short-lived: He resigned after three years. The resignation followed the implication of Amitabh Bachchan and his brother in the “Bofors scandal” by a newspaper, which he vowed to take to court. Amitabh Bachchan was eventually found not guilty of involvement in the ordeal.

His old friend, Amar Singh, helped him during a financial crisis due to the failure of his company ABCL. Therefore, Amitabh Bachchan started to support Amar Singh’s political party, the Samajwadi party. Mrs. Jaya Bachchan joined the Samajwadi Party and became a Rajya Sabha member. Amitabh Bachchan has continued to do favors for the Samajwadi party, including advertisements and political campaigns. These activities have recently gotten him into trouble again in the Indian courts for false claims after a previous incident of submission of legal papers by him, stating that he is a farmer.

Stardust and some of the other film magazines imposed a 15-year press ban against Amitabh Bachchan during his peak acting years. In his own defense, Amitabh Bachchan claimed to have banned the press from entering his sets almost till the end of 1989. It has been said that Amitabh Bachchan had banned certain publications because he disliked what was being published about him and as such, he vetoed them in an attempt to get them to conform this.

In 1988, Amitabh Bachchan returned to films, playing the title role in Shahenshah, which was a box office success due to the hype of Amitabh Bachchan’s comeback. After the success of his comeback film however, his star power began to wane as all of his subsequent films failed at the box office. The 1991 hit film, “Hum,” looked like it might reverse this trend, but the momentum was short-lived as his string of box office failures continued. Notably, despite the lack of hits, it was during this period that Amitabh Bachchan won his second National Film Award, for his performance as a Mafia don in the 1990 film “Agneepath.” These years would be the last he would be seen on screen for some time. After the release of Khuda Gawah in 1992, Amitabh Bachchan went into semi-retirement for five years. In 1994, one of his delayed films Insaniyat was released but was also a box office failure. Amitabh Bachchan turned producer during his temporary retirement period, setting up Amitabh Bachchan Corporation, Ltd. (A.B.C.L.) in 1996, with the vision of becoming a 10 billion rupees (approx 250 million $US) premier entertainment company by the year 2000. ABCL’s strategy was to introduce products and services covering the entire section of the India’s entertainment industry. Its operations were mainstream commercial film production and distribution, audio cassettes and video discs, production and marketing of television software, celebrity and event management. Soon after the company was launched in 1996, the first film was produced by the company. “Tere Mere Sapne” failed to do well at the box office but launched the careers of actors such as Arshad Warsi and South films star Simran. ABCL produced a few other films, none of which did well.

In 1997, Amitabh Bachchan attempted to make his acting comeback with the film Mrityudaata, produced by ABCL. Though Mrityudaata attempted to reprise Amitabh Bachchan’s earlier success as an action hero, the film was a failure both financially and critically. ABCL was the main sponsor of the The 1996 Miss World beauty pageant, Bangalore but lost millions. The fiasco and the consequent legal battles surrounding ABCL and various entities after the event, coupled with the fact that ABCL was reported to have overpaid most of its top level managers, eventually led to its financial and operational collapse in 1997. The company went into administration and was later declared a failed company by Indian Industries board. The Bombay high court, in April 1999, restrained Amitabh Bachchan from selling off his Bombay bungalow ‘Prateeksha’ and two flats until the pending loan recovery cases of Canara Bank were disposed of. Amitabh Bachchan had, however, pleaded that he had mortgaged his bungalow to Sahara India Finance for raising funds for his company.

Amitabh Bachchan attempted to revive his acting career and had average success with Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998), and received positive reviews for Sooryavansham (1999) but other films such as Lal Baadshah (1999) and Hindustan Ki Kasam (1999) were box office failures.

In the year 2000, Amitabh Bachchan stepped up to host India’s adaptation of the British television game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Entitled, Kaun Banega Crorepati. As it did in most other countries where it was adopted, the program found immediate success. The Canara Bank withdrew its law suit against Amitabh Bachchan in November 2000. Amitabh Bachchan hosted KBC until November 2005, and its success set the stage for his return to film popularity.

Amitabh Bachchan returns to the screen opposite Shahrukh Khan in the film Mohabbatein (2000). First Lady President of India Pratibha Devisingh Patil presenting the Best Film Actor Award for the year 2005 to Amitabh Bachchan for his role in the Hindi film Black.In 2000, Amitabh Bachchan appeared in Yash Chopra’s box-office hit, Mohabbatein, directed by Aditya Chopra. He played a stern, older figure that rivalled the character of Shahrukh Khan. Other hits followed, with Amitabh Bachchan appearing as an older family patriarch in Ek Rishtaa: The Bond of Love (2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), and Baghban (2003). As an actor, he continued to perform in a range of characters, receiving critical praise for his performances in Aks (2001), Aankhen (2002), Khakee (2004), Dev (2004) and Black (2005). Taking advantage of this resurgence, Amitabh began endorsing a variety of products and services, appearing in many television and billboard advertisements. In 2005 and 2006, he starred with his son Abhishek in the hit film Bunty Aur Babli (2005), the Godfather tribute Sarkar (2005), and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006). All of them were successful at the box office. His later releases in 2006 and early 2007 were Baabul (2006), Eklavya and Nishabd (2007), which failed to do well at the box office but his performances in each of them were praised by critics. He also made a guest-appearance as himself in the Kannada movie Amruthadaare, directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar. In May 2007, two of his films Cheeni Kum and the multi-starrer Shootout at Lokhandwala were released. Shootout at Lokhandwala did very well at the box office and was declared a hit in India, while Cheeni Kum picked up after a slow start and was declared an overall average hit.

In August 2007, a remake of his biggest hit, Sholay (1975), entitled Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, proved to be a disaster at the box office and was also poorly received by critics.

His first English language film, Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2007. and Released in India in September 2008. He received positive reviews from critics who hailed his performance as his best ever since Black. Amitabh Bachchan was slated play a supporting role in his first international film, Shantaram, directed by Mira Nair and starring Hollywood actor Johnny Depp in the lead. The film was due to begin filming in February 2008 but due to the writer’s strike, was pushed to September 2008.

Bhoothnath, in which he plays the title role as a ghost, was released on May 9, 2008. Sarkar Raj, released in June 2008, was a sequel to his 2005 film Sarkar. Sarkar Raj received a positive response at the box-office. Amitabh Bachchan was scheduled to co-host the second Live Earth event, Live Earth India 2008, with Jon Bon Jovi, in Mumbai India on December 8, 2008.

In November 2005, Amitabh Bachchan was admitted to Lilavati Hospital’s ICU once more, to undergo surgery for diverticulitis of the small intestine.[33] This occurred after Amitabh Bachchan complained of pains in his abdomen some days prior. During the period and that following his recovery, most of his projects were put on hold, including the television show he was in the process of hosting, Kaun Banega Crorepati. Amitabh returned to work in March 2006. Amitabh Bachchan is known for his deep, baritone voice. He has been a narrator, a playback singer and presenter for numerous programmes. Renowned film director Satyajit Ray was so impressed with Amitabh Bachchan’s voice that he decided to use his voice as commentary in Shatranj Ke Khiladi since he could not find a suitable role for him. Before entering the film industry, Amitabh Bachchan applied for an announcer’s job with All India Radio, although he was rejected.

Barabanki Land Case

In the runup to the Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections, 2007, Amitabh Bachchan made a film extolling the virtues of the Mulayam Singh government. His Samajwadi Party was routed, and Mayawati came to power

On June 2, 2007, a Faizabad court ruled that he had illegally acquired agricultural land designated specifically for landless Dalit farmers. It was speculated that he might investigated on related charges of forgery, as he has allegedly claimed he was a farmer. On July 19, 2007, after the scandal broke out, Amitabh Bachchan surrendered the land acquired in Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh and Pune. He wrote to the chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, to donate the lands that were allegedly acquired illegally in Pune. However, the Lucknow Court has put a stay on the land donation and said that the status quo on the land be maintained.

On October 12, 2007, Amitabh Bachchan abandoned his claim in respect of the land at Daulatpur village in Barabanki district. On December 11, 2007, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court gave a clean chit to Amitabh Bachchan in a case pertaining to alleged fraudulent allotment of government land to him in Barabanki district. A single Lucknow bench of Justice said there was no finding that the actor “himself committed any fraud or manipulated any surreptitious entry in the revenue records.”

After receiving a positive verdict in Barabanki case, Amitabh Bachchan intimated to Maharashtra government that he did not wish to surrender his land in Maval tehsil of Pune district.

In January 2008 at political rallies, Raj Thackeray, the chief of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, targeted Amitabh Bachchan , asserting that the actor was “more inclined” towards his native state than Maharashtra. He expressed his disapproval of Amitabh’s inaugurating a girls’ school named after his daughter-in-law, actor Aishwarya Rai Amitabh Bachchan, at Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh, rather than in Maharashtra.[43] According to media reports, Raj’s censure of Amitabh, whom he admires, stemmed out of his disappointment of not being invited to Amitabh’s son Abhishek’s marriage to Aishwarya, despite invitations to his estranged uncle Bal and cousin Uddhav.

Responding to Raj’s accusations, the actor’s wife, SP MP Jaya Amitabh Bachchan , said that the Amitabh Bachchan s were willing to start a school in Mumbai, provided the MNS leader donated the land build it. She told the media, “I heard that Raj Thackeray owns huge properties in Maharashtra, in Mumbai—Kohinoor Mills. If he is willing to donate land, we can start a school in the name of Aishwarya here.” However, Amitabh abstained from commenting on the issue.

Bal Thackeray refuted the allegations, stating, “Amitabh Bachchan is an open-minded person, he has great love for Maharashtra, and this is evident on many occasions. The actor has often said that Maharashtra and specially Mumbai has given him great fame and affection. He has also said that what he is today is because of the love people have given him. The people of Mumbai have always acknowledged him as an artiste. It was utter foolishness to make these parochial allegations against him. Amitabh is a global superstar. People all over the world respect him. This cannot be forgotten by anyone. Amitabh should ignore these silly accusations and concentrate on his acting.”

On March 23, 2008, more than a month and half after Raj’s remarks, Amitabh finally spoke out in an interview to a local tabloid saying, “Random charges are random; they do not deserve the kind of attention you wish me to give.” Later, on March 28, at a press conference for the International Indian Film Academy, when asked what his take was on the anti-migrant issue, Amitabh said that it is one’s fundamental right to live anywhere in the country and the constitution entitles so. He also stated that he was not affected by Raj’s comments. This political issue is now resolved from both the sides.

After popularity battle in films and television , Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan’s cold war has hit overseas with their world tours.

While the Bachchan’s ‘Unforgettable Tour‘ kick starts on July 18 in Toronto, Shah Rukh Khan’s Temptations Reloaded world tour took off on June 21, in Amsterdam.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan is a happy man these days, and it isn't Abhishek and Aishwarya who have given him a reason to be one but it is his late father Shri Harivansh Rai Bachchan who has made Big B a proud son yet again.
According to reports, a Parisian ballet troupe is all set to adapt some poems of the late poet and Big B is obviously excited at the development. This honour is the first of its kind for any Indian poet and is a complete dream come true for son Amitabh.
Big B, who was in London shooting for 'Teen Patti', had a stop-over at Paris for a meeting with the ballet organizers. It is believed that Big B discussed the modalities of a ballet based on his father's poems to be performed at the classic Champs Elysées there.
The illustrious actor is currently in the process of sifting through his father's voluminous works and choosing those poems whose images render themselves fluently to the ballet.

With Amitabh Bachchan’s celebrated look in the classic ‘Pag Ghunghroo’ from the film Namak Halaal stillfresh in our minds, the actor will be seen once again in a similar avatar in Eros International’s ‘Aladin’.

Big B will be seen grooving to a peppy number called ‘O Re Sawariya’ in the celebrated White kurta and Pink Pagadi which he once donned for the film Namak Halaal.

In this sequence, Jacqueline (Jasmine) is trying to woo Riteish (Aladdin) while Amitabh Bachchan (Genie) keeps popping into the scene at various points.

Says Director Sujoy Ghosh, “We had no intentions of repeating his look from Namak Halaal. It is purely a coincidence, but it definitely shows how the actor has impacted our minds over the years through his cult performances.”

Talking of the song, Sujoy adds, “O Re Sawariya is a fun filled number and Mr. Bachchan has added an extra charm to it with his unique style and unbeatable energy. We had a great time filming this song and I am sure audiences will love it too”.

The song is filmed on Mr. Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh and Jacqueline Fernandes and choreographed by Bosco Ceaser and Saroj Khan. The soundtrack is by Vishal and Shekhar.

The costumes for the film are designed by Narendra Kumar. - Sampurn Media

THE BIG B

The Rise and Fall and Rebirth of Bollywood Superstar Amitabh Bachchan

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater will present from April 8 - 17, 2005. Amitabh Bachchan will be here in person on April 15 at 7pm in Alice Tully Hall.

I love watching Amitabh Bachchan dance. Which is not to suggest that the most durable star in the history of Hindi cinema is celebrated for his fancy footwork. In fact, apart from his undoubted acting chops and the sheer force of his brooding masculine charisma, he is most fervently admired for his verbal gifts: the sonorous baritone that makes all his setpiece speeches sound like Mosaic proclamations, and the flair for mimicry he exploits as one of the first Bollywood actors to adopt authentic Bombay street slang in his gangster roles. Bachchan is also one of the few Bollywood stars who has occasionally recorded his own playback tracks. In contrast, Bachchan's typical terpsichorean style is about as basic as it gets, a sort of blue-eyed Punjabi variant on one of Zorba the Greek's "hoop-hah" strut 'n' shrug routines. But when he dances, Amitabh Bachchan is a great actor. Decked out in what looks like a gaucho outfit in Don (78), prancing and preening next to the staggering Zeenat Aman (India's answer to Claudia Cardinale), he looks less like a performer working through a carefully choreographed routine than a man enjoying himself, and enjoying life.

It is well known that when Bachchan tried to trade up to acting in the late Sixties from his job as a shipping company executive he was at first dismissed by producers as "too thin and too tall." It was probably no accident that in his early films he is often shown slumped over tables or sitting behind desks, playing brooding young poets and doctors, roles that echoed his own patrician upbringing as the son of the famous Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan. At 6'3", however, Bachchan is not really all that tall by American standards. He doesn't tower over his strapping co-star Dharmendra in Ramesh Sippy's Sholay (Flames, 75), the groundbreaking "curry Western" that confirmed his arrival as a new kind of superstar, a disaffected Angry Young Man who takes the law into his own hands. But with his short-waisted, long-legged physique he can look downright gangly, and when strategically photographed he becomes an honorary giant.

Bachchan has a classic standing-tall entrance in Yash Chopra's Trishul (Trident, 78), using his cigarette to light a fuse and then sauntering calmly away as a mountainside erupts behind him. The script for Trishul was one of several, beginning with Zanjeer (The Chain) in 1973, in which the writing team of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar (aka Salim-Javed) originated the Angry Young Man persona. The image owes something to Clint Eastwood, obviously, but the Bachchan hero (who is almost always named Vijay, Hindi for "Victor," the victorious one) is not a classic loner in the Hollywood cowboy mold. As the critic Vinay Lal points out in his essay "The Impossibility of the Outsider in the Modern Hindi Film," the loner in his pure form is a type unknown to Bollywood. In order to seem at least vaguely relevant and plausible to an Indian audience the Bombay hero has to be firmly enmeshed in a network of family and social ties. Trishul's Vijay isn't a generalized existential rebel but a man with a mission, setting out systematically to destroy his own father (Sanjeev Kumar), a megalomaniac industrialist, in a highly entertaining series of sharp-practice business deals. This violation of a taboo has a distinct subversive appeal in its own right, but in Bollywood terms it can only be justified as a response to an even greater violation: Vijay is out to avenge his sainted mother (Waheeda Rehman), who was abandoned, unwed and pregnant, so that her fiancŽ (Vijay's dad) could marry up into a rich family. This betrayal lays the groundwork for the financial empire his son attempts to destroy. To honor one imperative of his duty as a good son, Vijay must violate another, a contradiction he chews over obsessively in a series of setpiece speeches.

It has been suggested that even when Bachchan was playing proletarian characters he always walked "with the posture of an aristocrat." What is often most thrilling about his confrontations with authority is not so much his physical courage as his easy assumption of equality: this guy never feels outclassed. "You see a certain grace about that character," suggests Akhtar. "So many other actors have tried to ape Amitabh, but they've failed. Because they don't have the sophistication and the tehzeeb [culture] that he grew up with. As an actor, Amitabh's anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh's anger was mixed with hurt and tears . . . But I'm afraid that in later pictures even Amitabh developed that arrogance." (Kabir, Nasreen Muni. Talking Pictures: Conversations on Hindi Cinema with Javed Akhtar. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 1999.)

By the mid-Eighties this subtly inflected screen image had devolved into a subaltern superhero myth in pictures like Coolie (83) and Mard (He-Man, 85), garish big-budget cartoons aimed squarely at the groundlings. The Bachchan heroes in these films don't have to tear themselves in two in a fruitless bid to find a place in the world because they aren't really worldly beings. They are proletarian demi-gods, the sweat-stained masters of all they survey. We can tell that Allah looks with favor upon Bachchan's Iqbal in Coolie because this Muslim railway porter is assisted in his quest for justice by a magical animal, a gorgeous falcon that dive-bombs the labor leader's sneering enemies. And in Mard Bachchan's mother-fixated tongawalla (cart driver) leads the oppressed masses to victory with the help of both a deus ex machina dog and a superintelligent horse.

These films are perhaps best viewed today as comedies, and it seems unlikely that all of the humor was inadvertent: Bachchan's performances in them have an unmistakable glint of irony, and, like director Manmohan Desai, he seems to have thrown himself into them mostly as a lark, only a few steps removed from the intercommunal vaudeville of their earlier Amar Akbar Anthony (77). On the other hand, it's possible that an element of cynical calculation came into play in terms of their impact on the mass audience. This was also the period, after all, in which Bachchan was elected to India's Parliament as a Congress Party candidate from his hometown of Allahabad, and the films do somewhat resemble the flat-out mythologicals that helped confer an aura of godlike infallibility upon the South Indian actor-politicians M.G. Ramachandran and N.T. Rama Rao (see Film Comment, May-June 1987).

Within even the worst of his movies Bachchan remains an honorable performer, and in his best roles he leaves his superstardom at the door. In Ramesh Sippy's Shakti(Power, 82), which was made only a year before the rabble-rousing Coolie, Bachchan worked earnestly to serve a project in which he was bound to be overshadowed by his legendary co-star, Dilip Kumar, a revered veteran of the Golden Age and one of Bollywood's all-time greatest actors. In Salim-Javed's script, Bachchan's Vijay is the son of a rigidly dutiful police inspector, an unbending Father India figure who refused to negotiate with the ganglord (the late Amrish Puri) who kidnapped Vijay when he was a child. The boy managed to escape on his own only because another member of the gang (Dalip Talil) took pity on him and looked the other way. As an adult, Vijay goes to work for this man, who is now a notorious smuggler - "The man who saved me," he tells his outraged father, "when you were willing to let me die for the sake of the law."

Shakti is the most nuanced and lacerating of the Angry Young Man films, because the pivotal conflict is located not outside the hero, in the realm of plot mechanics, but within: "The only person I am afraid of is myself." Bachchan seems to deliberately damp down his trademark fiery acting style in order to harmonize with Kumar's understated naturalism, and he has some lovely courtly romantic interludes with New Cinema icon Smita Patil. But while the film won several Filmfare (India's Oscars) awards, including Best Screenplay, it was not a commercial success - in part, it seems, because it did not give Indian moviegoers the sort of iconic Bachchan they had come to expect. "In spite of being a megastar," Akhtar says, "[Amitabh] did not let his stardom come in the way of playing the son. And he played the son and looked submissive, or passive, or frightened, or intimidated - as a son should look in front of a powerful father. He showed that he's an actor first, then a star." (Kabir, 66-67.)

But if Amitabh Bachchan the man could at times have made better use of his fame, a couple of other things need to be said: Bachchan has never gone in for the jingoistic Hindu nationalism favored by action stars such as Manoj Kumar in the Seventies and Sunny Deol since the Nineties. He has played Muslim and Christian characters in several films, and at the peak of his almost unimaginable popularity he was not all that protective of his glowering heroic image, alternating action roles with high-stepping comedies like Namak Halaal (82) or moody middlebrow romances such as Yash Chopra's Kabhi Kabhie (76) and Silsila (81). He may not have been pro-active in the modern manner in terms of developing projects for himself, but he does seem to have been open to almost any kind of good role that came his way.

The mid-Eighties marked the pinnacle of Bachchan's superhuman stardom: news of his near-fatal accident in 1982 on the set of Coolie brought the country to a standstill. But his Olympian eminence proved short-lived: he was implicated (falsely) in the Bofors bribery scandal that crippled the post-Emergency government of his childhood friend Rajiv Gandhi, and the yellow press turned against him. The situation looked even more dire when a high-profile multimedia production company launched in the mid-Nineties, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd. (ABCL), was done in by a series of commercial miscalculations. Most of his Nineties films were not successful, which seemed to confirm the widespread suspicion that Bachchan was a spent force. He was not easy to replace: in the mid-Nineties it took all three of The Three Khans (Aamir, Shah Rukh, and Salman) to fill the vacuum created when The Big B dropped off the A List.

Bachchan was able to work his way back into the limelight toward the end of the decade with a run that, when first announced, sounded like a comedown prompted by financial desperation: appearing as the host on Kaun Banega Karorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And then, in the steamroller hits of the first phase of his comeback, such as Aditya Chopra's Mohabbatein (Loves, 00) and Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad, 01), Bachchan reinvented himself as an imposing patriarchal figurehead of Hindu Family Values. A new generation of Indian moviegoers saluted his screen image by shouting out not quotations from his movies but his popular catchphrase as a TV quizmaster, "Lock kiya jaye?" ("Close the computer?")

A throwaway shot early in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham drew affectionate chuckles from the mostly-NRI (Non Resident Indian) crowd when I saw the movie in Los Angeles: Bachchan's real-life wife Jaya standing on a chair to adjust her husband's necktie. The effect depends on a number of factors in addition to the star's famous height. It plays upon the Indian public's sense of the Bachchans as one of Bollywood's most durable couples, and upon the affection due to Jaya herself as a performer, a diminutive firecracker whose headstrong teenage characters in the Hrishikesh Muhkerjee films Guddi (71) and Mili (75) brought a recognizable type of modern, urban woman to the Hindi screen for the first time. Jaya and Amitabh met when he played a strong second-fiddle role in Mili, at which point she was much the bigger draw. But by 1999, one year after their 25th anniversary, Amitabh had been certified as the most popular movie star of all time in an online poll conducted by the BBC - a feat that was trumped, at least for me, when he became the first and only Indian actor memorialized in wax at Madame Tussaud's in London.

Cynics might suggest that Bachchan looked like a wax dummy in some of his post-comeback films. In more than a few of them he seems to have been cast mostly for his nostalgia value, stuffed and mounted on a pedestal. But in the best of them, as the rigid headmaster of an exclusive men's college in Mohabbatein, he looks more like something carved from granite. Bachchan clearly works hard to serve writer-director Aditya Chopra's conception of his character, Narayan Shankar, as a man so stiffened by disappointment that he's virtually immobile. In dramatic terms, after all, that's exactly what Shankar is: an immovable object for obstreperous co-star Shah Rukh Khan to hurl himself against. It actually works for the movie that Bachchan looks like a strange visitor from another era, the ne plus ultra of all the stern father figures his Vijay characters rebelled against in the Seventies.

Over the past few years, and against all odds, Bachchan has managed to build upon his initial comeback status as a serviceable senior character actor. He is once again, in his sixties, a major leading man, a feat that is certainly rare enough in the annals of world cinema to be noteworthy. The lobby of a major NRI movie palace like the Naz 8, near California's "Little India" in Artesia, seems to exist in a Seventies time warp: half of the coming attractions posters carry the Big B's glowering image. Many of these roles look like middle-aged "veteran" versions of character types he has been embodying all his life: conflicted criminals in Kaante(Thorns, 03) and Boom (04), flawed honest cops seeking redemption in Khakee (03) and Dev (04), and patriotic military icons in Lakshya (Objective, 04) and Deewaar(Wall, 04). But these days he plays even these hyper-masculine roles as men close to his own age, happily long-married patriarchs with grown children. Perhaps this is the upside of living in a traditional society - that people who would long since have been put out to pasture in the West can still be seen as the "author backed" subject of the narrative.

His charisma is sorely needed, as no one in the current crop of younger actors has anything like Amitabh Bachchan's moral authority, which is the grown-up distillation of his youthful anger. When the New Cinema stalwart Govind Nihalani (Ardh Satya/Half Truth, 83) made Dev, his Bollywood exposŽ of political complicity in communal violence, there was really only one viable choice for the voice-of-reason title role, an honest policeman fending off both Muslim and Hindu demagogues. Meanwhile, the Three Khans seem to have skipped over the seething Bachchan persona altogether in their search for role models, harking all the way back to the Shammi Kapoor hip-swivelers of the Fifties and Sixties who cajoled and schemed and danced their way to comfortable happy endings. And in a period in which the typical Bollywood blockbuster is designed to reassure the rising Indian middle class, the younger males (Vivek Oberoi, John Abraham, Arjun Rampal) are well-groomed good sons in expensive sweaters. In his best latter-day vehicles Bachchan relishes dispensing fatherly advice to these whelps, and to our delight, he is dancing again. In Yash Chopra's Veer-Zaara (04) he is an irrepressibly affirmative role model. He almost single-handedly redeems Sameer Karnik's formulaic Kyun! Ho Gaya Na...(Well! There You Are..., 04) with a high-stepping comic turn as a compulsive practical joker, the puckish deus ex machina in a blocked romance.

In Mohabbatein, Shah Rukh Khan, as a warmhearted music teacher, predictably wins his running battle with Bachchan's harsh task-master, who has turned his back on the possibility of love and happiness. But in the film's final sequence Khan still feels compelled to bend over and touch the feet of this literally monumental figure. Although Amitabh Bachchan's prodigious stature is now (as it has always been) partly an optical illusion, it can't be denied that in his sunset years he looks mightier than ever.