7 Unknown Facts About Amitabh Bachchan

1.     An avid and eloquent orator , Mr Bachchan hardly  speaks  at home. You will barely hear  him  utter a single  word  when he’s  not in  the public domain.

2.     His career-changing role  in Zanjeer was first offered  to  Dev Anand and Raj Kumar. Both  said  no because  the  hero had  no  songs to sing on screen. Even when Mr B stepped   into the khaki role the film’s  distributors demanded  that the hero get  at least one song.  Director Prakash Mehra complied midway. He added  a song where the  sullen cop and his sweetheart  gazed  out  of  the  window while two street singers  sang Diwane hain deewano ko na ghar chahiye.

3.     Every A-list heroine  refused  to  be paired with the  semi-newcomer in Zanjeer. Only  the then-superstar Jaya Bhaduri agreed. Jaya confessed  to me that she had  no role worth talking about in Zanjeer and she  wouldn’t even have considered  the offer if  it  wasn’t for her boyfriend .

4.     The  first time that the Amitabh-Jaya Jodi  was  to  come together, it was for  Hrishikesh  Mukherjee’s  Guddi. Mr B was supposed to play the small part  of  Jaya’s  fiancé. But then Hrishida  sacked  Mr B  and signed Samit Bhanja  for the  role. He had bigger  plans for  the Bachchan.

5.     He  is not only  an avid singer, but also a closet composer. Rang barse was  a  tune that  AB gave  to  composers Shiv-Hari in Silsila. And  the Kihsore Kumar chartbuster Jahaan teri yeh  nazar  hai in Kaalia was actually composed by Mr Bachchan(and not R  D Burman).

6.     The  first  time that Amitabh Bachchan and  Rekha came together  was  in Do Anjaane  in 1976. They were  supposed to  co-star earlier in a film called Duniya Ka Mela  . But the  producers replaced  Mr Bachchan  with  Sanjay Khan  at  the last  minute.

7.     Mr  B is  a  big fan  of  Waheeda Rehman. When they worked  together for  the  first time in  Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera  Mr Bachchan couldn’t take his eyes off her. When she was  shooting barefeet in  the burning sands  of Rajasthan  Mr Bachchan  ran after her with her  footwear  to ensure she did not have  to bear the blistering heat a second   beyond the camera.