Even at the age of 82, megastar Amitabh Bachchan refuses to slow down, honouring all his commitments to films and TV shows. To this date, Amitabh Bachchan is considered to be one of the most hardworking actors in Bollywood with a career of over 50 years now. In his blog post in 2021, Amitabh Bachchan made a startling revelation, giving fans a sneak peek into the shoot of his then-upcoming film GoodBye. He wrote about how he shot for his part for the day with “no lunch break.”
But, what shocked fans was when Amitabh Bachchan revisited his career in the 70s, stating that he used to work double shifts in a day, also working on two films at the same time, which were often shot in two different locations. Amitabh Bachchan revealed that he shot for his blockbuster cult-classic films Deewar and Sholay during the same time.
This revelation was also backed by Amitabh Bachchan’s son Abhishek Bachchan during an interview with Galatta Plus Hindi. “I was doing double shifts early in my career, and I was tired one day, and went home early in the morning. He was having his breakfast, ready to leave. He said, ‘How was it?’ I said I was very tired. Very casually, he said, ‘We used to do a lot of this. I was shooting Sholay about an hour’s drive from Bengaluru, where the Ramgarh set was. We would shoot all day, I would pack up, take an hour’s drive to Bengaluru airport, take a flight to Mumbai, and go straight to Ballard Pier, where we were shooting the climax of Deewaar. I would shoot all night, come back home, take a shot of adrenaline, fly back to Bengaluru the next morning, and shoot all day’. He did this for a month,” Abhishek Bachchan said.
Abhishek Bachchan said that when he asked his father when he slept, the megastar replied, “Once you take the adrenaline, you can’t sleep.”
Eventually, Amitabh Bachchan’s hard work paid off in spades as both Sholay and Deewaar turned out to be two of the all-time classics of Bollywood. It also gave wings to the megastar’s career, establishing him as one of the greatest superstars in the film industry.
Deewaar, made on a budget of Rs 1.3 crore, earned over Rs 7 crore at the box office and is, to this date, considered a ground-breaking cinematic masterpiece.
Sholay, on the other hand, is a cult classic and is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. By multiple accounts, Sholay remains one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, adjusted for inflation.