Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan is the “undisputed patriarch of Indian cinema”. Source: News Corp Australia
BOLLYWOOD star Amitabh Bachchan arrived this week at Melbourne Airport where fans forgot about taking selfies and fell to the floor to kiss his feet.
Many Australian movie-goers will know Bachchan for his one Hollywood role — as the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby — but to Indian fans he’s the veteran of more than 180 films and the host of a popular TV game show.
Last night he attended the opening of the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, with a screening of his 1975 Bollywood western Sholay, recently transferred to 3D. The Hindi epic has been compared to Sergio Leone’s famed spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
“It’s moving with the times, moving with technology,” Bachchan said of the film that was India’s first in 70mm and stereo sound.
Bachchan said he was surprised when Luhrmann asked him to play a small role in The Great Gatsby.
The character of Meyer Wolfsheim in Fitzgerald’s novel has been criticised as a crude Jewish stereotype; Luhrmann reportedly cast a non-Jewish actor to avoid a potentially anti-semitic portrayal.
Bachchan — who appears as Wolfsheim wearing a human molar for a tiepin — said he was not aware of the reason behind the director’s casting decision.
“I’ve never looked at it that way,” he said.
“And I don’t think that, in cinema, that is a consideration. You just do the role that you want to do, or that you are appropriate for...
“It doesn’t really matter who plays what, so long as the character, and the creativity of the character comes through. I look upon it as a creative opportunity, rather than wanting to make any kind of commentary.”
Bachchan in 2011 refused to visit Australia to receive an honorary doctorate because of a recent spate of attacks on Indian students. He visited later when the controversy had settled, and accepted the honour from Queensland University of Technology.
He said cinema was a builder of bridges between cultures. “When we sit inside a hall, we don’t know what the caste, creed, religion or colour of the person sitting next to you is, but you enjoy the same (film),” he said.
The director of the Indian Film Festival, Mitu Bhowmick Lange, said Bachchan was the “undisputed patriarch of Indian cinema”.
The 71-year-old actor is making four films this year and will again be the host of TV’s Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
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