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His parents didn’t have 2 rupees to spare

During an episode of the Hindi television show Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), which he has hosted for years, Bachchan shared a memory from his childhood years in New Delhi. He wanted to join a cricket club, but his parents couldn’t afford the fee of 2 rupees (0.027 US dollars).

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He was homeless in Mumbai

Bachchan has frequently talked about his rather tough move to Mumbai in 1968. A struggling actor with no industry contacts or a roof over his head, he ended up sleeping under the stars on Mumbai’s famous seafront, Marine Drive.

“I came to Bombay with a driving licence, and that‘s about it. I said if I don’t become an actor, I will drive a cab. I didn’t have a place to stay. I spent many nights on the benches of Marine Drive,” he revealed in a 1999 interview with Vir Sanghvi.

Ironically, one of the actor’s most memorable songs (above), from Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), was filmed along that very stretch.

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‘Mr Sexy Baritone’ was actually rejected by All India Radio

Famous for his deep baritone – women still swoon over the poems he recited in Yash Chopra’s romantic classic Silsila (1981) – it beggars belief that he was rejected by All India Radio, the country’s national radio bureau. Bachchan’s voice remains the stuff of legend, and was even the subject of the 2015 film Shamitabh.

Trivia alert: Silsila is rumoured to have mirrored Bachchan’s real life. According to the grapevine, the married actor was then in a relationship with Rekha (pictured above), who played his mistress in the film. In what was the ultimate casting coup, wife Jaya portrayed his spouse.

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You won’t believe what his first acting role was

Bachchan got his first taste of the spotlight when he played a “chicken” in a kindergarten play. He talks about it in his blog, sr.bachchan.tumblr.com: “The stage had been a constant feature with me during my entire schooling years, right from kindergarten, where if I recollect I played a chicken flapping my feathers and singing a ditty from some prominent nursery rhyme.” It was much later, at Sherwood College in the Himalayan town of Nainital, that he honed his passion for acting.

Trivia alert: Bachchan played second fiddle to co-star Dharmendra in 1975’s Hollywood Western-style action drama Sholay (above) – but it went on to become the defining film of his career.

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He was deemed too tall for the silver screen

Bachchan often recounts the number of times he was turned away for silver screen roles because he was considered too tall – six foot three inches (1.9 metres) – to be a leading man.

He joked about it on Instagram (he loves posting on social media and is prolific on Twitter), with a photo (above) captioned: “My application picture for a job in movies .. 1968 .. no wonder I was rejected!!”

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It was in 1973, at the age of 31, when Bachchan finally broke through with Prakash Mehra’s action film Zanjeer (above), one of the most iconic movies of the decade. The blockbuster established the actor as India’s “angry young man”, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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