Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Harivansh Bachchan (IPA: [əmɪˈtaːbʱ ˈbəttʃən]; born 11 October 1942) is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s for movies like Deewar and Zanjeer, and was dubbed India's first "angry young man" for his on-screen roles inBollywood, and has since appeared in over 180 Indian films in a career spanning more than four decades.[2][3] Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema.[4][5][6] So total was his dominance of the movie scene in the 1970s and 1980s that the French director François Truffaut called him a "one-man industry".[7][8]

Bachchan has won many major awards in his career, including three National Film Awards as Best Actor (a record he shares withKamal Hassan and Mammootty), a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies and fourteen Filmfare Awards. He is the most-nominated performer in any major acting category at Filmfare, with 39 nominations overall. In addition to acting, Bachchan has worked as a playback singer, film producer and television presenter. He also had a stint in politics in the 1980s. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1984 and the Padma Bhushan in 2001 for his contributions towards the arts.

Bachchan made his Hollywood debut in 2013 with The Great Gatsby, in which he played a non-Indian Jewish character, Meyer Wolfsheim

Bachchan was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, in north central India.[9] His father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, was a Hindi poet, and his mother, Teji Bachchan, was a Punjabi Sikh from Faisalabad (now in Pakistan).[10] Bachchan was initially named Inquilaab, inspired from the phrase made famous during the Indian independence struggle, Inquilab Zindabad, which means "long live revolution". However, at the suggestion of fellow poet Sumitranandan Pant, Harivansh Rai changed the name to Amitabh which means, "the light that will never die." Though his surname was Shrivastava,...