Big B broke the stereotype of the anti-hero and became an uber-hero
Actor Amitabh Bachchan is giving away the secret of his success free on Twitter, for anyone who cares to read. (Also Read: Amitabh Bachchan's Special Day. And it Has Nothing to do With Cricket)
It is this:
Rule #2? Read his tweet again. Get it? Joke.
Had it not been a joke, it's unlikely that India's biggest star could offer a formula of any sort to succeed. It wasn't because he followed rules that the shipping executive with Bollywood dreams eventually became a national treasure - it was because he broke them.
In his very first film
Saat Hindustani (1969), the young Amitabh Bachchan played not a romantic hero but a nationalist poet in the backdrop of the liberation of Goa from Portuguese rule. His fourth film (if you count a bit part in Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal's
Bombay Talkie) was 1971's
Parwana, in which he murdered the father of the woman he loved and tried to frame her boyfriend. Two films later, he played another gun-toting killer in
Reshma Aur Shera. In 1973's
Bandhe Haath, he plays a thief contemplating murder. Even the film that made him a superstar had him on the wrong side of the law - 1975's
Deewar in which he played the smuggler brother of a honest cop.
Until Shah Rukh Khan came along decades later, Amitabh Bachchan was that rarest of Bollywood species - an actor who broke stereotype, the anti-hero who became an uber-hero.
For many years now, Mr Bachchan has been able to choose any role he likes - good, bad or ugly - secure in the knowledge that no matter what shade of grey he might happen to portray on screen, his status as Shahenshah of the people would go unchallenged. That's a benediction hard to come by for most actors. And there are no rules to achieving it.
Amitabh Bachchan was last seen in this month's
Shamitabh and has
Piku and
Wazir coming up later this year.