Javed Akhtar was confident about Amitabh Bachchan doing Zanjeer after watching his flops: ‘What an actor he is!’

And that was all about their first meeting, which the writer called ‘not very eventful.’ After their meeting, Javed Akhtar watched a couple of films of Amitabh Bachchan. He said, “I saw some of his films which didn’t do well–Parvana, Bombay To Goa, and some of his excerpts in Guddi and suddenly I felt after watching these few films that this man is a major talent and both of us (Salim-Javed) agreed on this. We were like, ‘My God, what an actor he is!’ Unfortunately, his films were not doing well at that time.”

It was around this when Salim-Javed wrote the script of Zanjeer and were struggling to find a lead actor for their film. He said, “The script was ready, Prakash Mehra was going to make it. There was no hero available. In retrospect, you will feel, ‘Why was there no hero available?'” He explained, “No one was willing to do the film because those were the times of Rajesh Khanna, and super hit music of RD Burman, and Lakshmikant Pyarelal, and here we had written a script, where the hero had no songs, romance or light-hearted scenes.”

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He added, “People just couldn’t understand what kind of hero he was. He is only angry the whole time. So no actor was willing to do it. We kept insisting to Prakash Mehra to cast Amitabh Bachchan. Problem was every time Prakash Mehra was convinced to cast him, one of Amitabh’s films would fail. He (Mehra) would get discouraged.”

But as no actor was take up the role, Prakash Mehra had no choice but to cast Amitabh Bachchan.

“So, one day, I found his (Amitabh Bachchan) phone number and called him and told him you might not remember me, but I have a script and I want to narrate it to you. He didn’t have much to do either, so he told me, ‘you can come right away’. I went there. I told him, ‘I will narrate the script to you, and I will also have you meet the producer, but please don’t discuss any terms and discussions with the producer, just blindly do the film.’ He asked me to narrate the story to him and I did. I still remember very clearly that he looked at me and said, ‘Do you think I can pull this off?’ Because till that time, he was playing poet, doctor, and writer, and so on. I said, ‘Nobody can do this better than you. Noone.'” This was their second meeting.

After this, Javed Akhtar took Prakash Mehra to the sets of Gehri Chaal, where Amitabh Bachchan was shooting with Hema Malini and Jeetendra. Here, they signed the film and the deal was on.

Javed Akhtar clarified, “With or without Zanjeer, Amitabh Bachchan would have surely become successful in one or the other way. It is not possible to waste a talent like him.”

Previously talking to SAM YouTube channel, Javed Akhtar shared, “Amitabh Bachchan was not a superstar at that time, to say the least, but he was an unbelievably good actor. He was the man who we felt would be able to play our Vijay.”

He added, “If you’re working with actors like Amitabh Bachchan or Dilip Kumar, you know that you can put the weight on the actor, and the actor will carry it. Sometimes, when you feel that the actor has limited talent, you make the scene easier for him. But these actors could carry anything. Amitabh Bachchan, you give him any scene and he’ll do it with competence. You give him any line and he’ll make it natural.”