Stressing on the unpredictability of an actor’s life, Shekhar Suman recalled an anecdote about Amitabh Bachchan, told to him by Shashi Kapoor several years ago. Shekhar made his acting debut in the film Utsav, produced by Shashi Kapoor, who ‘discovered’ him out of the blue and cast him in the movie mere weeks after he’d landed up in Mumbai from Bihar. Shekhar said that Bachchan experienced a streak of failure when he started off, and was completely written off by the industry. He eventually went on to become the greatest male movie star that the country has ever produced.
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In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, while addressing the failure that his son Adhyayan Suman had to endure after starting out, Shekhar said, “I was listening to one of Bachchan saab’s interviews, and he said that for the first few years, 13-14-15 of his films flopped. And directors, without naming him, would refer to him as ‘that constipated actor’.”
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He continued, “I know it for a fact because Shashi Kapoor told me. He said that there were producers who couldn’t work without him later, but they were the ones who were saying, ‘Oh my God, this constipated looking actor has come again looking for work. Throw him out of the set, who allowed him inside?’. He was rejected for having a bad voice by All India Radio, when he auditioned to be a news reader. How ironic is that? They said he didn’t have a good voice, some people said he’s too tall.”
Shekhar then recalled the ‘worst’ story that Bachchan had told about his struggles. “He said that he came out of a studio and was sitting in his car, his parents were sitting behind him. One guy came and knocked on the window, and he abused in chaste Hindi, and said, ‘Who the f**k asked you to come here? Have you seen your face? Go back to wherever you’ve come from’. Can you imagine?”
Shekhar said that anybody in that position would’ve given up and changed tracks, but Bachchan persevered. “He took it all on his chin because he had faith in himself,” Shekhar said. Bachchan is still considered the greatest male star of the country, and will next be seen in the big-budget Telugu film Kalki 2898 AD. Shekhar, on the other hand, was seen in the Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar.
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