Kiccha Sudeep recalls standing outside Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalow to catch a glimpse of him, queueing up to watch his films: ‘Didn’t even understand Hindi’

Kiccha Sudeep said that he was a huge Amitabh Bachchan fan in his youth, and described him as the OG superhero. "He came before Spider-Man, Batman and Avengers," Sudeep said.

Kiccha Sudeep has worked with Amitabh Bachchan twice.

Kiccha Sudeep recalled his youth, and how he used to be obsessed with Amitabh Bachchan. Sudeep said in an interview that he would make sure to catch all of Amitabh’s films as a child in Bangalore, and when he came to Mumbai as a young actor, he’d join the crowd outside Amitabh’s bungalow in Juhu, and wait to catch a glimpse of his favourite star.

In an appearance on Mashable’s Bombay Journey show, Sudeep described Amitabh as the original ‘superhero’. “He came before Spider-Man, Batman and Avengers,” Sudeep said.

Also read | Kiccha Sudeep says he was ‘not called’ for Baahubali 2 after first film: ‘It started moving very fast, I couldn’t catch up’

The Kannada actor made it a point to converse entirely in Hindi, and recalled, “In our town, when his films used to be released, there would be queues upon queues. We didn’t even understand Hindi. We used to like his fight scenes, and his voice, and we’d return home not knowing what we’d seen — we didn’t know why they were fighting, whom they were fighting with, why they were singing. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that people in the South have learned Hindi largely because of Kishore Kumar’s songs and Amit ji’s films.”

He continued, “They taught us Hindi. We wanted to know what Kishore Kumar was singing about, and we learned the language just to understand Amit ji’s dialogues. At that time, Hindi wasn’t even our second or third language. He is our superhero.”

Sudeep said that when he learned that Amitabh’s house was barely a minute away from the PG that he was staying at, he’d brag to his friends that Amitabh was in the same neighbourhood. It was during this time that he’d show up at Amitabh’s house in the evenings, just to catch a glimpse of him. Sudeep and Amitabh have worked together in the films Rann and Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy.

Sudeep was most recently seen in the action-adventure 3D film Vikrant Rona, which was released in theatres on Thursday.

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