Fourth National Award this year and commercial success and critical acclaim for “Pink”, Amitabh Bachchan has reasons enough to celebrate his birthday in a big way but as the megastar of Hindi cinema turns 74 on Tuesday, he seems to have no special plans to ring in the day.
With each passing year, Bachchan keep surprising fans with his performances. In 2016, he had three releases “Wazir”, “Te3n”, and “Pink”, and though only one of them became a success, it made up for the failure of other two.
His father Harisvanshrai Bachchan was a renowned Hindi poet; mother Teji Bachchan was a close associate of the Nehru-Gandhi family but he had to face lot of hardships to attain stardom in his career that spans more than for four decades now.
It took Bachchan a wait of 13 flops to finally break in the film industry as a lead hero, thanks to Prakash Mehra’s action film “Zanjeer”.
His angry-young Vijay Khanna enthralled everyone and it marked the start of another era in Bollywood–“Abhimaan”, “Namak Haram”, “Deewar”, “Trishul”, “Kabhie Kabhie”, “Sholay”, “Don”, the list is endless. Soon, Bachchan made his way to superstardom.
There were a few hiccups in his otherwise illustrious career, including a near-fatal injury while shooting for Coolie (1983). He returned to the big screen after a five-year absence with the box-office success Shahenshah (1988).
In 1990, Bachchan played the iconic role of gangster Vijay Deenanath Chauhan in Mukul S Anand’s “Agneepath”.
Indian government honoured Amitabh Bachchan with the Padma Shri in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015 for his contributions to the arts.