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Jaya Bachchan was certain that her husband, Amitabh Bachchan, wouldn’t tolerate director Vidhu Vinod Chopra for even a week when he left for the shoot of Eklavya: The Royal Guard. The filmmaker was surprised to see Bachchan traveling light, and when he asked Big B why he didn’t have more luggage with him, the actor said, “Jaya told me that I wouldn’t be able to stand you for more than a week.” Her prediction came true, and Chopra confessed in an interview with Siddharth Kannan that they ended up having arguments shortly afterwards. While Eklavya didn’t work at the box office, it was India’s official entry to the Oscars that year.
“We actually started fighting after a week or 10 days. But he stayed on, and completed the film. I gifted him a car worth Rs 4.5 crore because he tolerated me. It was really humbling for a star of his stature to have to tolerate me, it was big of him,” he said. In a previous interview from 2021, Chopra had recalled the story of presenting Bachchan with the car, and his mother’s reaction to the grand gesture.
“I will never forget this incident. I took my mother with me when I was gifting the car to Amitabh. She handed him the keys. She came back, sat in my car, which was a blue Maruti van. She called Big B ‘Lamboo.’ I didn’t have a driver at the time, so I was driving. She told me, ‘Tu Lamboo nu gaadi dedi?‘ I said, ‘Haan.’ She replied, ‘Tu khud kyun nahi leta gaadi? I told her I would buy a car; when it was time. She responded, saying, ’11 lakh ki toh hogi.’ And I laughed because she didn’t know that it was Rs 4.5 crore. I told her the cost, and she slapped me, calling me ‘bewakoof.’ I will never forget that, because what is money if it can’t give you joy,” he said.
Eklavya wasn’t a major hit, but the period drama was selected as India’s official entry to the Academy Awards. Chopra’s last film was 12th Fail, which became a sleeper hit on the strength of solid word-of-mouth. He has also directed the films Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, and Shikara. But his biggest success stories are Munna Bhai MBBS, PK, and 3 Idiots, all of which were directed by Rajkumar Hirani.
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