Amitabh Bachchan had once revealed that during his struggling days in Mumbai, he did not have a space to live. As a result, Big B slept on benches that were placed by Marine Drive. In an interview in 1999, Amitabh revisited his early days in Mumbai and shared that he did not take support from his family when he moved to Mumbai to become an actor. He said that while there were offers to appear in ads at the time, he was never interested in appearing in advertisements until much later in his career.
“I came to Bombay with a driving license, and that’s about it. It said if I don’t become an actor, I will drive a cab. I didn’t have a place to stay. I spent many nights on the benches of Marine Drive,” he told Vir Sanghvi, in an interaction for Rediff in the late 1990s. “But you were from a good family, you had a very successful job in Calcutta,” the journalist noted.
Amitabh explained, “I had left all that because I had a desire to work in the movies. I didn’t have a place to stay. You know there is a limited amount of time you can spend with friends because you’re barging into their house. So I spent a couple of days on Marine Drive benches with some of the largest rats I have seen in my life. The whole intention was to act. They were rough times, but I had landed up, as I said, with my driver’s license and said that if I didn’t make it as an actor, I would ply taxis.”
Destiny had bigger plans for Amitabh Bachchan. He got his big break in Saat Hindustani in 1969. He shot to fame after he appeared in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand (1971). His breakthrough came when he appeared in Prakash Mehra’s action film Zanjeer. He earned the moniker ‘Angry Young Man’ at the time.
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