Having known the man and the myth for 25 years, I can safely say, Amitabh Bachchan has a long way to go before he retires.
“Why should I think of giving up? Do you plan to stop writing in the near future?” he challenges me. “Why are people so keen to retire me from my work?”
I mumbled something about no one wanting him to retire.
Bachchan Saab is unrelenting, unyielding. He has been seriously indisposed a number of times. “I have come to the jaws of death and then being pulled back. Someone somewhere has protected me all these years.”
About his longevity as an actor, Bachchan Saab says, “I have no idea about what sells and what doesn’t. I’m bad with economics and finance. I’ve never known how to market myself. But I think if you look at my career graph you’ll see there have been very few other actors with this kind of variety. I started with K.A. Abbas and Hrishikesh Mukherjee doing more sensitive cinema. Then Salim-Javed wrote my more commercial films. Wherever there was a Deewaar there was an Amar Akbar Anthony. Where there was a Muqaddar Ka Sikandar there was also a Chupke Chupke. I have done a more serious kind of cinema in Saudagar and Main Azaad Hoon to countermand criticisms of over-commercialization.”
He is content doing the work that he is. “I’ve now found acceptability as a senior character. So I’m taking it from there. I’m no longer playing junior roles. I’m not romantically paired with girls half my age.”
Any plans of direction? “As things stand now, I can’t even dream of it. Because I don’t even know the craft well enough. Other creative people throw a gauntlet at me, and I pick it up. But that’s it. It’s difficult for me to go beyond that. On the sets, I provide inputs when I feel strongly about it and then leave it to the director to accept or reject my suggestions.”
Bachchan Saab admits his inputs are not accepted readily. “Most of the time they reject my inputs. And happily those films have done well. So I feel my suggestions are not worth taking. Otherwise all my directors have been extremely compliant. But then I haven’t been a difficult actor to work with. I always believe the director is the captain of the ship.”
Also Read: Amitabh Bachchan house tour: Inside actor’s iconic Mumbai home ‘Jalsa’ via these pictures
