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Actor Amitabh Bachchan is known as a teetotaler, but this wasn’t always the case. In an old interview with India Today, published in 1980, the actor spoke about being a chain-smoker, meat-eater, and drinker in the past, and revealed why he gave it all up. Amitabh said that his decisions weren’t motivated by religion, as he spoke about the difficulties that he’d face in finding vegetarian food abroad. He said that his wife, Jaya Bachchan, as well as his mother, Teji, both eat meat, so he isn’t bothered about it.
Amitabh revealed, “I don’t smoke, drink or eat meat. It isn’t anything religious but simply a matter of taste. In our family, my father is a vegetarian and my mother is not. Similarly, Jaya eats meat and I don’t. I used to eat meat – in fact, I used to drink and smoke as well but now I have given them up. In Calcutta I smoked 200 cigarettes a day – yes, that’s right, 200, but then I gave it up after coming to Bombay. I used to drink too – anything, we’d drink anything we could get our hands on but a few years ago I decided I didn’t really need it. My habits don’t cause me any problems except when I’m shooting abroad. Then, it becomes difficult to get vegetarian food.”
In the same interview, Amitabh also spoke about being a non-violent person, but admitted that he would lose his temper in his younger years. ‘I don’t think I’m a violent person myself. Nor do I lose my temper often. Of course I got into a few fights in my college days but that’s about all. Screen violence is very unreal. It’s meant to be fantastic and people accept it as that.”
In an article published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1989, Amitabh’s father-in-law, Taroon Coomar Bhaduri, had written about his impressions of the actor. “I am often asked what sort of a man Amitabh really is. Is he a modern-day Don Juan, a fellow always out for fun? The fact is he is just the opposite. Amit, in real life, is an introvert. He talks only when it is necessary. He is not given to unnecessary exuberance,” he had written, adding, “In spite of his image. Amitabh is a vegetarian, teetotaller and a non-smoker, not by conviction but by choice. Normally a recluse and very reticent, he has a fantastic sense of humour. But he also is a very sensitive person who gets easily hurt. He is a man of strong likes and dislikes, and his circle of friends is a very close one. He goes to parties very rarely.”
Amitabh’s father-in-law had also described him as a ‘religious’ man, but ‘not a fanatic’. “He reads his Gita every morning and he plays his sitar. If he had the leisure, he would devote his time to books of which he has plenty,” he had written.
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