Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian actor, film producer, television host, occasional playback singer and former politician, who works in Hindi cinema.
103 Facts About Amitabh Bachchan
2.
Amitabh Bachchan was educated at Sherwood College, Nainital, and Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi.
3.
Amitabh Bachchan first gained popularity in the early 1970s for films such as Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay, and achieved greater stardom in later years, dubbed India's "angry young man" for several of his on-screen roles in Hindi films.
4.
Amitabh Bachchan consistently starred in top grossing Indian films with critical acclaim since mid 1970s to 80s, such as Amar Akbar Anthony, Don, Trishul, Muqaddar Ka Sikander, Kaala Patthar, Kaalia, Naseeb, Namak Halaal, Coolie, Sharaabi and Mard, as well as some of his most acclaimed performances include Namak Haraam, Abhimaan, Mili, Silsala, Dostana, Shakti, Shahenshah and Agneepath.
5.
Amitabh Bachchan made an appearance in a Hollywood film, The Great Gatsby, in which he played a non-Indian Jewish character.
6.
Amitabh Bachchan has won numerous accolades in his career, including four National Film Awards as Best Actor and many awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies.
7.
Amitabh Bachchan has won sixteen Filmfare Awards and is the most nominated performer in any major acting category at Filmfare with 34 nominations in Best Actor and 42 nominations overall.
8.
Amitabh Bachchan entered politics for a time in the 1980s.
9.
Amitabh Bachchan has been involved in several humanitarian works and he is a leading brand endorser in India.
10.
Harivansh Rai Amitabh Bachchan was an Awadhi Hindu Kayastha, who was fluent in Awadhi, Hindi and Urdu.
11.
Teji Amitabh Bachchan was a Punjabi Sikh Khatri from Lyallpur, Punjab, British India.
12.
Amitabh Bachchan has a younger brother, Ajitabh, he is 5 years younger than him.
13.
Bachchan's parents were initially going to name him Inquilaab, inspired by the phrase Inquilab Zindabad popularly used during the Indian independence struggle; the name Amitabh was suggested to his father by poet Sumitranandan Pant.
14.
When his father was looking to get him admitted to a school, he and Amitabh Bachchan's mother decided the family's name should be Amitabh Bachchan instead of Shrivastava.
15.
Amitabh Bachchan's father died in 2003, and his mother in 2007.
16.
Amitabh Bachchan attended Kirori Mal College at the University of Delhi in Delhi.
17.
Amitabh Bachchan graduated with Bachelor of Science degree from Kirori Mal College in 1962.
18.
Amitabh Bachchan was a friend of Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, before he became an actor.
19.
Amitabh Bachchan used to spend time with them when he was a resident in New Delhi.
20.
Amitabh Bachchan's family were very close to the Nehru-Gandhi family of politicians.
21.
When Sonia Gandhi first came to India from Italy before her marriage, Amitabh Bachchan had received her at the Palam International Airport on 13 January 1968.
22.
Amitabh Bachchan spent 48 days at Bachchan's house with his parents before her marriage to Rajiv.
23.
Amitabh Bachchan applied for a role as a newsreader for All India Radio, Delhi but "failed the audition".
24.
Amitabh Bachchan made his film debut in 1969, as a voice narrator in Mrinal Sen's National Award-winning film Bhuvan Shome.
25.
Amitabh Bachchan's first acting role was as one of the seven protagonists in the film Saat Hindustani, directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and featuring Utpal Dutt, Anwar Ali, Madhu and Jalal Agha.
26.
Anand followed, in which Amitabh Bachchan starred alongside Rajesh Khanna.
27.
Amitabh Bachchan then played his first antagonist role as an infatuated lover-turned-murderer in Parwana.
28.
Amitabh Bachchan's only film with Mala Sinha, Sanjog was a box office failure.
29.
Amitabh Bachchan was struggling, seen as a "failed newcomer" who, by the age of 30, had twelve flops and only two hits.
30.
Amitabh Bachchan was offered with a dual role movie by the director OP Goyle, and writer OP Ralhan for the film Bandhe Hath in 1973.
31.
Amitabh Bachchan was exceptional, a genius actor who was in films that weren't good.
32.
Amitabh Bachchan earned his first Filmfare Award nomination for Best Actor, with Filmfare later considering this one of the most iconic performances of Bollywood history.
33.
The film was a huge success and one of the highest-grossing films of that year, breaking Amitabh Bachchan's dry spell at the box office and making him a star.
34.
Later, Amitabh Bachchan played the role of Vikram, along with Rajesh Khanna, in the film Namak Haraam, a social drama directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and scripted by Biresh Chatterjee addressing themes of friendship.
35.
Amitabh Bachchan's supporting role won him his second Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor.
36.
In 1974, Amitabh Bachchan made several guest appearances in films such as Kunwara Baap and Dost, before playing a supporting role in Roti Kapda Aur Makaan.
37.
Amitabh Bachchan then played the leading role in the film Majboor.
38.
The other, released on 15 August 1975, was Sholay, which became the highest-grossing film ever in India at the time, in which Amitabh Bachchan played the role of Jaidev.
39.
Amitabh Bachchan starred as a young poet, Amit Malhotra, who falls deeply in love with a beautiful young girl named Pooja who ends up marrying someone else.
40.
Amitabh Bachchan was again nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award for his role in the film.
41.
Amitabh Bachchan 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.
42.
Amitabh Bachchan's performance won him his second Filmfare Best Actor Award.
43.
Amitabh Bachchan gave towering performances in Yash Chopra's Trishul and Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikandar both of which earned him further Filmfare Best Actor nominations.
44.
In 1979, Amitabh Bachchan starred in Suhaag which was the highest earning film of that year.
45.
Amitabh Bachchan was required to use his singing voice for the first time in a song from the film Mr Natwarlal in which he starred with Rekha.
46.
Amitabh Bachchan received Best Actor nomination for Kaala Patthar 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.
47.
Amitabh Bachchan had played a role in a special appearance for the movie Kaun Jeeta Kaun Haara in the year 1987 and he sang a playback song with Kishore Kumar in this movie.
48.
On 26 July 1982, while filming a fight scene with co-actor Puneet Issar for Coolie, Amitabh Bachchan had near-fatal intestinal injury.
49.
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.
50.
Amitabh Bachchan required an emergency splenectomy and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, at times close to death.
51.
The director, Manmohan Desai, altered the ending of Coolie: Amitabh Bachchan's character was originally intended to have been killed off; but, after the change of script, the character lived in the end.
52.
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 and the top-grossing film of that year.
53.
Amitabh Bachchan's illness made him feel weak both mentally and physically and he decided to quit films and venture into politics.
54.
Notably, despite the lack of hits, it was during this era that Amitabh Bachchan won his first National Film Award for Best Actor for his performance as a Mafia don in the 1990 cult film Agneepath.
55.
In 1997, Amitabh Bachchan attempted to make his acting comeback with the film Mrityudata, produced by ABCL.
56.
Amitabh Bachchan went into administration and was later declared a failed company by the Indian Industries board.
57.
Amitabh Bachchan had pleaded that he had mortgaged his bungalow to raise funds for his company.
58.
Amitabh Bachchan attempted to revive his acting career, and eventually had commercial success with Bade Miyan Chote Miyan and Major Saab, and received positive reviews for Sooryavansham, but other films such as Lal Baadshah and Hindustan Ki Kasam were box office failures.
59.
In 2000, Amitabh Bachchan appeared in Yash Chopra's box-office hit, Mohabbatein, directed by Aditya Chopra.
60.
Amitabh Bachchan played a stern, elder figure who rivalled the character of Shahrukh Khan.
61.
Amitabh Bachchan's role won him his third Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor.
62.
One project that did particularly well for Amitabh Bachchan was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black.
63.
Amitabh Bachchan's performance was unanimously praised by critics and audiences and won him his second National Film Award for Best Actor, his fourth Filmfare Best Actor Award and his second Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor.
64.
Amitabh Bachchan received positive reviews from critics who hailed his performance as his best ever since Black.
65.
Amitabh Bachchan was slated to play a supporting role in his first international film, Shantaram, directed by Mira Nair and starring Hollywood actor Johnny Depp in the lead.
66.
Amitabh Bachchan's histrionics come primarily in the form of his well-modulated baritone, conveying his emotions and of course, from the well-written lines.
67.
Amitabh Bachchan co-starred with Rishi Kapoor in 102 Not Out, a comedy drama film directed by Umesh Shukla based on a Gujarati play of the same name written by Saumya Joshi.
68.
Amitabh Bachchan did Gulabo Sitabo in 2020 for which he received Filmfare Critics Award For Best Actor.
69.
In 2009, Amitabh Bachchan hosted the third season of the reality show Bigg Boss.
70.
The sixth season was hosted by Amitabh Bachchan, commencing on 7 September 2012, broadcast on Sony TV and received the highest number of viewers thus far.
71.
Amitabh Bachchan has been a narrator, a playback singer, and presenter for numerous programmes.
72.
Amitabh Bachchan has done voice-over work for the following movies:.
73.
The Amitabh Bachchan family bought shares worth $252,000 in Meridian Tech, a consulting company in US Recently they made their first overseas investment in Ziddu.
74.
Amitabh Bachchan was named in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, leaked confidential documents relating to offshore investment.
75.
In 1984, Amitabh Bachchan took a break from acting and briefly entered politics in support of a long-time family friend, Rajiv Gandhi.
76.
In 1987, Indian Express said his brother Ajitabh Amitabh Bachchan owned an apartment in Switzerland, giving rise to speculations about his involvement in the "Bofors scandal", revealed in the year before.
77.
Ajitabh Amitabh Bachchan sued Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter for linking him to Bofors payments in 1990 and won damages in the United Kingdom.
78.
Jaya Amitabh Bachchan joined the Samajwadi Party and represented the party as an MP in the Rajya Sabha.
79.
Amitabh Bachchan appeared in advertisements and political campaigns for the party.
80.
Amitabh Bachchan's claim that he too was a farmer in the advertisements were questioned in courts.
81.
Amitabh Bachchan has claimed to have been banned by film press during the emergency years for his family's friendship with Indira Gandhi.
82.
Amitabh Bachchan has been accused of using the slogan "blood for blood" in the context of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
83.
In October 2014, Amitabh Bachchan was summoned by a court in Los Angeles for "allegedly instigating violence against the Sikh community".
84.
Amitabh Bachchan was one of the trustees of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
85.
Amitabh Bachchan founded the Harivansh Rai Bachchan Memorial Trust, named after his father, in 2013.
86.
Amitabh Bachchan was made a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for the polio Eradication Campaign in India in 2002.
87.
Amitabh Bachchan donated to the Maharashtra Police Welfare Fund in 2013.
88.
Amitabh Bachchan was the face of the 'Save Our Tigers' campaign that promoted the importance of tiger conservation in India.
89.
Amitabh Bachchan supported the campaign by PETA in India to free Sunder, a 14-year-old elephant who was chained and tortured in a temple in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.
90.
Amitabh Bachchan has been a vocal "brand ambassador" of the Swachh Bharat Mission and featured in a few advertisements to promote the campaign.
91.
In 2020, Amitabh Bachchan was helping the Government of India promote its public health message concerning COVID-19 before he and some members of his family themselves became infected.
92.
Amitabh Bachchan has been married to veteran actress and politician Jaya Bhaduri since June 3,1973, when he was 30 years old, and together they have two children; Abhishek, an actor, and Shweta, an author, journalist and former model.
93.
Amitabh Bachchan did business and lived in London for brief period of time.
94.
Amitabh Bachchan's wife Ramola is a fashion designer and was active in business.
95.
Amitabh Bachchan was famously rumoured to have had an extramarital affair with actress Rekha in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s after they first acted together in Do Anjaane, and later in many successful films like Khoon Pasina, Ganga Ki Saugandh, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Mr Natwarlal, Suhaag, Ram Balram and ending in Silsila, though they have both denied it.
96.
Amitabh Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema.
97.
Amitabh Bachchan earned respect among critics for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence, is considered one of the most respected public figure of India.
98.
In 1999, Amitabh Bachchan was voted the "greatest star of stage or screen" in a BBC Your Millennium online poll.
99.
In March 2010, Amitabh Bachchan has been named the list of CNN's "top 25 Asian actors of all time".
100.
Amitabh Bachchan was named "Hottest Vegetarian male" by PETA India in 2012.
101.
Apart from industry awards won for his performances throughout the years, Amitabh Bachchan has received several honours for his achievements in the Indian film industry.
102.
Amitabh Bachchan was crowned as Superstar of the Millennium in 2000 at the Filmfare Awards.
103.
On 27 July 2012, at the age of 69, Amitabh Bachchan carried the Olympic torch during the last leg of its relay in London's Southwark.