Now Im just a credit title - Amitabh Bachchan (Interview)

He sleeps for “four to five hours” a day, burns the midnight oil to blog and has a packed shooting schedule.

But 67-year-old megastar Amitabh Bachchan insists he is neither the busiest person in the Hindi film industry nor an important part of any of his projects.

“I don’t think that is entirely correct. I just do whatever is offered to me. I do films, I am now doing television (’Big Boss 3′),” said Amitabh shrugging off the busy bee title.

“If you plan your day and time, you can find time to do all these things. If the body responds, it’s fine. But sooner or later it’s going to pack up, so might.

As well work while it’s working,” said Amitabh who squeezed in enough time to reply to 1207 SMSes that he received on his birthday last week.Over four decades of excellent cinematic presence has made him a brand. Doesn’t that overshadow others in a film?

“I don’t think that is entirely correct. May be in the early years, they (audiences) came to watch my films because I was in it. But now I am just one of the credit titles. I am not that important,” Bachchan told IANS in an interview.

“I am a part of the crew and the cast. Even in my early years, I used to think that. I think the product itself is more important. It’s the film that is going to make you or your name or give you visibility. If that goes wrong then everything goes wrong. So one must work as a team so that the product works,” he explained.

The actor stays awake till the wee hours to write his blog. “That is like a compulsion. I feel very vacant and I feel as though I haven’t done justice to my day if I don’t write the blog because there are now a few hundred people who are regular. They wait to know about me and they want to talk to me,” Amitabh said.

“I feel somewhat guilty if I don’t write the blog every day. So even if I am late, I make sure that I put something down,” he added. Doesn’t his family object to his blogging addiction? “They are always saying, ‘Please don’t write your blog. Get off your blog’,” he said.

“You have all kinds of funny things happening to your neck and shoulder because you’re all the time bending down on your laptop. But that’s okay,” added the Big B, as he is fondly called. Strenuous working hours and regular blogging hardly leaves any time to catch up on sleep but the actor is content with what he gets.

“I get about four to five hours’ sleep and that’s okay,” said the veteran, who was seen this year only in a cameo in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s “Delhi-6″. Amitabh was here to promote his upcoming film “Aladin”. Releasing Oct 30, it is a contemporary take on the classic fairy tale and he stars in it as the Genie.

Produced by Sunil Lulla and Sujoy Ghosh, the film has been directed by Ghosh. It also stars Riteish Deshmukh in the lead opposite debutante Jacqueline Fernandez. Sanjay Dutt appears in a negative role in the film. Apart from casting magic in the film as the Genie, the sexagenarian has also performed action sequences in “Aladin”. He says the only way to attempt stunts at his age is by keeping “fit”.

“You have to keep fit. Some of the action scenes are really tough and they are physically very draining. But now they have wonderful gadgetry which can make you jump sky high and do all kinds of things. We use that, but even doing that is strenuous.

If you are not prepared to do all that, then it doesn’t work,” he said. Despite wife Jaya, son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya all being actors, the Hindi film industry still has not seen the entire family together in a film.

When asked about it, he said: “I don’t know. Somebody will have to design a project like that. If they do,we’ll be very happy to do it.” Apart from “Aladin”, Amitabh’s other projects include “Paa”, “Teen Patti”, “Rann” and “Johnny Mastana”.