Word: bachchans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Today the man known as the Big B is bigger than ever. The last two years have seen a string of box-office successes and a level of critical acclaim unprecedented in his 35-year career. Bachchan shot 11 films last year and has signed up for nine more this year, up from only four in 2002. He has endorsement contracts with a total of 17 brands, from Parker Pens to Pepsi, making his white goatee and neat brown hair common on billboards and TV screens from Jakarta to Johannesburg. And in August, he returned to host a second series...
Only five years ago, it looked like it was all over for the King of Bollywood. After ruling Indian cinema as its undisputed superstar for a quarter century, Amitabh Bachchan began to bomb. A succession of films bled money. Endorsements dried up. Even his company's 1996 production of the Miss World beauty pageant was plagued by protests from both Indian conservatives and feminists. By the turn of the millennium, Bachchan found himself $20 million in debt and staring obscurity in the face. "The industry thought he was finished," says Ram Gopal Varma, director of Bachchan's latest hit, Sarkar...
...When Bachchan first faded from view, it marked the end of a remarkable run of hits, starting with his first lead role as a cop fighting corruption in 1973's Zanjeer. The biryani western Sholay ran for six years in Bombay on its release in 1975. In 1983, when Bachchan was injured on the set of Coolie and fell into a coma, India ground to a halt. Millions prayed, thousands gave blood and kept a candlelit vigil outside his hospital and on his recovery one fan ran 800 km backwards across India in jubilation...
...industry where casting criteria other than talent?family ties, sex appeal, mob pressure?are often rumored to play a role, Bachchan rose to superstardom by delivering consistently towering performances. It also helped that he gave a lot of them: Sarkar ("boss" in Hindi), a stylish interpretation of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, is his 152nd movie. But Bachchan also had a profound connection to his public. In the 1970s and 1980s, as India stagnated under an autocratic government and the suspension of civil liberties during Indira Gandhi's 1975-1977 Emergency, Bachchan played a series of angry young...
...year ago on a set in Mumbai, a young man in worn jeans decorated with patches shaped like marijuana leaves sprawled sulkily in a director's chair and demanded again and again that Amitabh Bachchan, the godfather of Bollywood, get it right. "Cut! Cut!" yelled Farhan Akhtar, the 29-year-old veteran of one movie, before marching up to Bachchan, the 60-year-old veteran of more than 100, for an urgent discussion. The scene featured Bachchan as an Indian army colonel banging two hammers on a table off screen to simulate the jolt of an incoming Pakistani artillery round...