Introducing the child Amitabh Bachchan in Pa

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

It’s no cakewalk for a 66-year-old actor to play a boy 54 years younger to him. But trust the sexagenarian superstar Amitabh Bachchan to give his best shot to pull off the seemingly impossible.

Rather than having a child artist play the role, Big B himself plays 12-year-old son of Abhishek Bachchan in director R Balakrishnan’s (Balki) film Pa. In the movie Big B plays a character suffering from Progeria and therefore he ages very fast through the course of the story.

Quite understandably, Big B had to use a lot of prosthetic make-up to look like a 12-year-old child.

Not just the make-up, the superstar got so immersed in his character that he began behaving like a kid on the sets. Since his character eats a lot of chocolates in the film, Big B would keep munching them even when the camera was not rolling. At times, Balki says, he had to “pull those bars of chocolate away from his hands.”

To stay within his character, the superstar would often throw childish tantrums on the sets.

“On the sets, he would also stomp his feet like a brat and just go on whining, ‘I want…I want…I want!’ until he got what he wanted,” Balki is quoted by a Mumbai tabloid.

Balki admits he’s floored by Big B’s dedication for his role in the film. So convincing is the superstar as a kid that Balki says many won’t be able to recognize him.

So, quite wisely, the director has decided that the movie’s credits will read ‘Introducing Amitabh Bachchan’ because the superstar hasn’t played any role like this before in his life.

Can’t wait for this ‘Pa’.

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