Amitabh Bachchan Height Weight Age Body Statistics Biography

Amitabh Bachchan Height Weight Age Wiki Net Worth, Affairs, Marriage, Wife, Children, Family Biography & much more. Amitabh Bachchan born Amitabh Srivastava; 11 October 1942) is an Indian film actor, film producer, television host, occasional playback singer and former politician known for his work in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of the most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. During the 1970s–1980s, he was the most dominant actor in the Indian movie scene; the French director François Truffaut called him a “one-man industry”.

Bachchan was born in 1942 in Allahabad to the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and his wife, the social activist Teji Bachchan. He was educated at Sherwood College, Nainital, and Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. His film career started in 1969 as a voice narrator in Mrinal Sen’s film Bhuvan Shome. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s for films such as Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay, and was dubbed India’s “angry young man” for his on-screen roles in Hindi films. Referred to as the Shahenshah of Bollywood (in reference to his 1988 film Shahenshah), Sadi ka Mahanayak (Hindi for, “Greatest actor of the century”), Star of the Millennium, or Big B, he has since appeared in over 200 Indian films in a career spanning more than five decades, and has won numerous accolades in his career, including four National Film Awards as Best Actor, Dadasaheb Phalke Award as lifetime achievement award and many awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies. He has won sixteen Filmfare Awards and is the most nominated performer in any major acting category at Filmfare, with 42 nominations overall. In addition to acting, Bachchan has worked as a playback singer, film producer and television presenter. He has hosted several seasons of the game show Kaun Banega Crorepati, India’s version of the game show franchise, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. He also entered politics for a time in the 1980s.

The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015 for his contributions to the arts. The Government of France honoured him with its highest civilian honour, Knight of the Legion of honour, in 2007 for his exceptional career in the world of cinema and beyond. Bachchan also made an appearance in a Hollywood film, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013), in which he played a non-Indian Jewish character, Meyer Wolfsheim.

Beyond the Indian subcontinent, he acquired a large overseas following of the South Asian diaspora, as well as others, in markets including Africa (South Africa, Eastern Africa and Mauritius), the Middle East (especially UAE and Egypt), the United Kingdom, Russia, the Caribbean (Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago), Oceania (Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand) and the United States.^[

Early life

Bachchan was born on 11 October 1942 in Allahabad to the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and social activist Teji Bachchan. Harivansh Rai Bachchan was an Awadhi Hindu Kayastha, who was fluent in Awadhi, Hindi and Urdu. Harivansh’s ancestors came from a village called Babupatti, in the Raniganj tehsil, in the Pratapgarh district, in the present-day state of Uttar Pradesh, in India. Teji Bachchan was a Punjabi Sikh Khatri from Lyallpur, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan). Bachchan has a younger brother, Ajitabh.

Bachchan’s parents were initially going to name him Inquilaab (Hindustani for “Revolution”), inspired by the phrase Inquilab Zindabad (which translates into English as “Long live the revolution”) popularly used during the Indian independence struggle; the name Amitabh was suggested to his father by poet Sumitranandan Pant. Although his surname was Shrivastava, Amitabh’s father, who opposed the caste system, had adopted the pen name Bachchan (“child-like” in colloquial Hindi), under which he published all of his works. When his father was looking to get him admitted to a school, he and Bachchan’s mother decided the family’s name should be Bachchan instead of Shrivastava. It is with this last name that Amitabh debuted in films and used for all other practical purposes, Bachchan has become the surname for all of his immediate family. Bachchan’s father died in 2003, and his mother in 2007.

Bachchan was educated at Boys’ High School & College, Allahabad; Sherwood College, Nainital; and Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. When Bachchan finished his studies his father approached Prithviraj Kapoor, the founder of Prithvi Theatre, to see if there was an opening for him, but Kapoor “offered no encouragement”. Bachchan then applied for a role as a newsreader for All India Radio, Delhi but “failed the audition”. He became a business executive for Bird & Company in Kolkata (Calcutta), and worked in the theatre before starting his film career. It is thought that his mother might have had some influence in Amitabh Bachchan’s choice of career because she always insisted that he should “take centre stage”