Meet mr. Amitabh Bachchan

Check out this picture of Amitabh Bachchan in his home production, Paa. Believe it or not, the little kid in the picture is actually 67-year-old Amitabh Bachchan.

Big B is now small. So small that he has become the son of his son. Check out this picture of Amitabh Bachchan in his home production, Paa. Believe it or not, the little kid in the picture is actually 67-year-old Amitabh Bachchan.

Paa stars Big B, but not as ‘the pa’. Instead, he plays Auro, the 12-year-old son of Abhishek Bachchan, an idealistic MP living in Lucknow. “This character is inspired by a rare disease called progeria,” says R Balki, the director of the film.

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“Amitabh plays a child who has grown five times faster than is normal and is showing symptoms of excessive ageing.”
The role of an over-aged bald child took Big B almost five hours every day to put on the make-up and another two to take it off. Strangely enough, the six-foot-two actor is shown at his normal height throughout the film. And what about his deep thunderous voice? “His voice is like a child in the film,” says Balki who had earlier directed Amitabh in Cheeni Kum in 2007.

He adds, “Amitabh’s voice is without its boom, no dubbing artiste was used, as he insisted on modulating his own voice.” In order to sound like a child, Bachchan wore special, shaped with extra teeth that alter speech patterns, causing a lisp as well. Wearing these, Big B even sang a song in a child’s voice. The film’s music director Aadesh Shrivastava said, “Don’t ask me how he has managed to do it. I just sat there stunned.”

How does Balki think Big B’s fans will react? “Paa is not about Big B the star, but Auro the overgrown child,” he says.