On his 83rd birthday, Sharad Raj reflects on the cinematic journey of Amitabh Bachchan — the superstar of the last millennium — and imagines the menacing villain Hindi cinema never fully allowed him to be.

Amitabh Bachchan, turning 83 on October 11, 2025, remains the undisputed megastar whose towering presence shaped the moral landscape of Hindi cinema. Often hailed as the “Angry Young Man,” Bachchan blurred the lines between hero and anti-hero, embodying characters that were flawed and deeply human. From Deewar and Agneepath to Silsila and Sarkar, his portrayals reflected the angst and aspirations of India’s changing social order. Yet, beneath the layers of heroism lay the potential for one of the greatest villains Hindi films never had — a dark side the screen only briefly glimpsed but never fully unleashed. 

The Making Of A Reluctant Villain

Amitabh Bachchan: the superstar of the last millennium, who according to Randhir Kapoor occupied all positions from number 1–10, and whose near-fatal accident brought the entire country to a standstill. He would also have made a very successful and menacing villain. If one was to chart the career graph of Amitabh who is turning 83 on October 11, 2025, one will realize he has played the bad guy or a morally ambiguous character in most of his best and popular films, some including early films that were not very successful but laid the foundation of an illustrious career. 

It started with Jyoti Swaroop’s Parwana in 1971, where he kills the father (Om Prakash) of the woman he loves (Yogita Bali)! It may have been a desperate choice since a whole lot of films as the leading man were not successful at the box-office, so maybe he tried to play the villain. The film is an iconic film of his career and a taut thriller, that even Sriram Raghavan pays homage to in his Johnny Gaddar (2007). This was followed by C.V. Sridhar’s Gehri Chaal in 1972 where he is the son of a bank manager and helps a gang of thieves to rob the bank where his father worked. By no means the virtuous “hero” Hindi films were so used to and still are. In fact, Jeetendra was the hero of Gehri Chaal.

Then came Rajshri Production’s Saudagar in 1973, where Amitabh plays once again an out-and-out villain. A village jaggery seller Moti (Amitabh Bachchan), he falls for Phool Bano (Padma Khanna) but does not have enough money for the “Meher”. His jaggery is made by a widow Majubee (Nutan), Moti proposes marriage to her so that he can save the money he pays to Majubee for making jaggery and collect money for Phool Bano’s “Meher” instead. Moti divorces Majubee once he has the money, but Phool Bano does not know how to make jaggery! Amitabh’s character is that of a conniving man with an ulterior motive. He was the protagonist in all three films Parwana, Gehri Chaal and Saudagar despite being the bad guy. Bachchan had done this decades before Shah Rukh Khan made it fashionable in Baazigar and Darr.

The Rise Of The Angry Young Man

Then of course came the epitome of being the “Angry Young Man”, Deewar (1975) where he was not a baddie but an anti-hero who chooses the path of crime as opposed to an affable, lovable, upright lover-boy image of Rajesh Khanna who was the most popular one at the time. If my memory serves me right, then perhaps for the first time the leading man of a Hindi film is an atheist!

In Hrishikesh Mukherjee films like Abhimaan (1973), Amitabh is petty and a husband jealous of his wife’s (Jaya Bachchan) success enough to destroy his marriage. In Hrishida’s Namak Haram (1973) he is a man confused between Socialist values of his friend (Rajesh Khanna) and the Capitalist demands of his father’s business. Just for the sake of his bruised ego Amitabh loses a friend and becomes anti-working class. In Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Mili (1975) once again Amitabh’s character is of a man from a so-called “disgraced” background, a drunkard and a sociopath. 

Let us look at Yash Chopra’s Trishul (1978) where he is a illegitimate son who leaves no stone unturned to take revenge from his father and goes a bit too far if one was to compare it with the act of his father (Sanjeev Kumar) ditching his mother (Waheeda Rehman). We all know of Don (1978), Silsila (1981), Shakti (1982), Satte Pe Satta (1981), Agneepath (1989) etc. where either he is in a double role of one good and one bad guy or morally questionable. Once again in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Jurmana (1978) he is the guy who schemes to get a girl (Rakhee) to his “bedroom”.  

Between Morality And Myth

Among his later films Amitabh is a regressive patriarch in Aditya Chopra’s Mohabbatein (2000). In Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd (2006) he is attracted to his daughter’s friend (Jiah Khan) and gets involved with her! While in Ramu’s Sarkar (2005) he is lethal as a Brandoesque mafia lord and in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black (2005) he is an ill-tempered teacher who finally kisses his deafblind student! Blasphemous but true. 

In fact, Bachchan was not only a quintessential anti-hero or the problematic guy, but his screen persona was that of a “working-class” hero — coolie, waiter, taxi driver, desi bar owner, mill worker, coal miner (who can forget the brooding intensity of Kaala Patthar where he is a coward redeeming himself?), orphan amongst others. Imagine playing the title role of Laawaris (1981)?

Not to forget another Prakash Mehra smash hit Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), one of Devdas’s finest adaptations. And if ever he was the rich guy, he was on the wrong side of the law avenging the wrongs done to him and his family (Deewar and Agneepath).

Bachchan’s stardom emanates from the travails of the common man of this country. This shines in sharp contrast to Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom whose star persona is a walking advertisement of Manmohanomics and Global Capitalism. The working class has been eliminated from popular culture after the advent of privatization. He would undoubtedly have made a great villain.

Amitabh was keen to play Gabbar in Sholay as we all know but later made a mighty mess of it in Ram Gopal Varma’s abominable readaptation of Sholay. For all those who labelled Amitabh Bachchan as a man who never crossed the line, took risks and challenged being typecast, need to reassess him, albeit within the mainstream paradigm.

Amitabh Bachchan completely altered the Hindi film star’s persona and stands out bracketed between Dilip Kumar’s Nehruvian disillusionment of the fifties and Shah Rukh Khan’s global gloss of the nineties.