Amitabh Bachchan Debuted in 1969 and Has Since Won Four National Awards for Best Actor, the Padma Vibhushan and the 50th Dadasaheb Phalke Award

On 29 December 2019, President Ram Nath Kovind presented the Dada Saheb Phalke Award to Amitabh Bachchan at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) reported that evening. It was the 50th Phalke Award, which PIB calls Indian cinema’s biggest honour, and a PIB release eight days earlier described it as coming in his 50th year in the Indian film industry.

Bachchan was born on 11 October 1942, according to Gale’s Contemporary Authors, so he turns 84 on 11 October 2026. His first film came out in 1969.

A first film about Goa, in the year the Phalke Award began

Saat Hindustani (1969) was written, directed and produced by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas. The India International Centre in New Delhi, which screened it in June 2018, lists it at 144 minutes in Hindi and describes it as the story of seven Indians who try to free Goa from Portuguese rule. The same note records that the film won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration and that it marks Bachchan’s debut in films.

Gale credits him with the part of Anwar Ali and lists a second credit from the same year, as narrator of Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome. The history behind the film, Indian forces entering Goa in December 1961, is told in tuput’s account of how Goa’s liberation unfolded.

Zanjeer: the role four other leading men did not take

By 1973, IANS reported in a feature for Outlook, Bachchan had spent more than three years in Hindi films and appeared in over two dozen of them, with his better-remembered parts in cameos and his lead roles in flops. The feature draws on Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s 2015 book Written by Salim-Javed. The writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar had a script about a policeman who takes on the system, and the director Prakash Mehra agreed to make it.

Finding a lead took time. In Chaudhuri’s account, as IANS relays it, Dilip Kumar judged the part “uni-dimensional,” Dev Anand objected that the hero had no songs, Raj Kumar declined, and Dharmendra’s early interest came to nothing. Pran was the first to be cast, as Sher Khan, and passed on a recommendation of Bachchan to Mehra. Mehra later told a biographer, “I liked his voice and eyes,” according to IANS.

Distributors were still cautious. Salim-Javed, who were then writing Sholay for the Sippy family, paid for a special screening of Zanjeer and persuaded the Sippys to sign Bachchan for that film, IANS says. Mehra went on to direct him in films including Hera Pheri in 1976 and Sharaabi in 1984. Outlook’s feature credits Zanjeer with creating the “angry young man” figure in Hindi cinema.

Deewaar: a 100-week run and remakes in five languages

Deewaar opened on 24 January 1975. Yash Chopra directed, Gulshan Rai produced, Shashi Kapoor played Bachchan’s brother and Nirupa Roy their mother. Eastern Eye reports that Salim-Javed wrote the screenplay in 45 days, that the film was launched on 21 March 1974, and that it was shot, edited and released within a year.

According to Eastern Eye, the film ran for more than 100 weeks in cinemas and won all the major Filmfare awards for 1975 except Best Actor. It was remade in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Persian and Turkish, and it was one of three Hindi-language entries in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Gale lists Filmfare Best Actor awards for Bachchan for Amar Akbar Anthony, Don and Hum.

Coolie: an injury on location and a film that opened on 2 December 1983

Eastern Eye dates the accident to 26 July 1982 in Bangalore, during a fight scene for Manmohan Desai’s Coolie. In Darragh O’Donoghue’s account for Senses of Cinema, a staged punch landed for real. Bachchan was taken to Breach Candy Hospital in Bombay, and O’Donoghue writes that thousands gathered outside the hospital over the following months. Eastern Eye says shooting resumed on 7 January 1983, with the same fight sequence that had stopped the film.

Desai changed the film in response. O’Donoghue writes that the screen freezes on that fight with a caption in three languages, and that the lead character, Iqbal, who had been written to die a martyr’s death, now survives. Eastern Eye says Prayag Raj directed it and that Desai credited himself too, in his own production, to please distributors. Coolie opened on 2 December 1983. O’Donoghue calls it by far the most successful film at the Indian box office that year, selling more than 70 million tickets in twelve months, and Eastern Eye also names it the highest-grossing film of 1983 in India.

Kaun Banega Crorepati: a quiz show that began in 2000

Star Plus launched Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2000 as the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, with Bachchan as host and a top prize of ₹1 crore (10 million rupees). Shanti Kumar of the University of Texas at Austin wrote in the media journal Flow in 2005 that the show became the biggest hit on Indian television. In the 2000 to 2001 season it aired four days a week at 9 pm. Its first season had a television rating point (TRP, the Indian audience measure) of 14, when most cable shows were in single digits, and the channel received around 200,000 calls a day from people who wanted to be contestants.

Kumar adds that the show held viewers in a way not seen on Indian television since the Doordarshan serials of the Ramayan and Mahabharat in the late 1980s. The Deccan Chronicle reported on 18 July 2026 that Sony Pictures Networks India had announced Season 18, with Bachchan as host, for 10 August 2026 at 9 pm on Sony Entertainment Television and Sony LIV. The season’s theme, “Sochna Padega” (you will have to think), moves the game away from memorised answers, Outlook reported.

The official lists

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Padma Awards directory records Bachchan under Art, Maharashtra, for the Padma Shri in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. The President’s Secretariat notification dated 8 April 2015 lists him under the Padma Vibhushan, in the same category and state.

On the National Film Awards, the four Best Actor citations are for Agneepath, Black, Paa and Piku. The Daily Star reported in August 2007 that the Black award, for the 2005 films, came after an announcement delayed by nearly a year because of court cases, and that the same announcement made Rang De Basanti the best popular film, a film tuput covers in Rang De Basanti at twenty. The Assam Tribune reported on 15 September 2010 that he won for R. Balki’s Paa. PIB announced on 28 March 2016 that he had won for Piku, with a feature jury headed by the director and producer Ramesh Sippy.

Counts of the awards differ between outlets. The Daily Star in 2007 called Black his third Best Actor award and counted Saat Hindustani among the earlier two, while Gulf News in 2010 called Paa his third after Agneepath and Black. Listing the four citations by film, as above, gives four.

Gale also records a 1999 BBC online poll that named him actor of the millennium, his appointment as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 2003, and public service announcements promoting polio immunisation.

The Phalke Award

On 24 September 2019, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announced on Twitter that Bachchan had been selected unanimously, writing that he had entertained and inspired two generations, Khaleej Times reported. PIB’s release of 21 December 2019 placed the honour alongside the 66th National Film Awards, for films of 2018, scheduled for 23 December, and called it the 50th Phalke Award. PIB then reported the presentation by President Kovind on 29 December.

PIB’s backgrounder on the National Film Awards says the Phalke Award honours outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema and is named for Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who directed India’s first feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913. The award was instituted in 1969, the year of Bachchan’s first film, and its first recipient was Devika Rani.