Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Harivansh Bachchan is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s for movies like Zanjeer and Deewar, and was dubbed Indias first angry young man for his onscreen roles in Bollywood. Referred to as the Shahenshah of Bollywood, Star of the Millennium or Big B, he has since appeared in over 180 Indian films in a career spanning more than four decades. Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. So total was his dominance of the movie scene in the 1970s and 1980s that the French director Franois Truffaut called him a oneman industry.

Bachchan was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, in north central India. His ancestors hailed from a village called Babupatti in the Raniganj taluka of Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. His father Harivansh Rai Bachchan was a Hindi poet and his mother Teji Bachchan was a Punjabi Sikh from Lyallpur , Punjab. Bachchan was initially named Inquilaab, inspired by the phrase Inquilab Zindabad popularly used during the Indian independence struggle. In English, Inquilab Zindabad means Long live the revolution. However, at the suggestion of fellow poet Sumitranandan Pant, Harivansh Rai changed the boys name to Amitabh, which means the light that will never die. Although his surname was Shrivastava, Amitabhs father had adopted the pen name Bachchan , under which he published all of his works. It is with this last name that Amitabh debuted in films and for all other practical purposes, Bachchan has become the surname for all of his immediate family. Bachchans father died in 2003, and his mother

Source: Wikipedia