20th Annual Life OK Screen Awards/ Winners

Reflecting back on an illustrious career spanning over four decades, winning awards and accolades for his superlative performances, Amitabh Bachchan was honoured with the Screen Lifetime Achievement Award this year. In fact, his early beginnings as a voice narrator in Mrinal Sen’s National Award winning film Bhuvan Shome paved the path for a landmark career.
Bachchan first gained popularity in the early seventies as the ‘Angry Young Man’ of Hindi cinema. His debut in Saat Hindustani earned him his first National award for Best Newcomer. He went on to earn critical acclaim for his role as a doctor in Anand, an impressive cameo in Reshma Aur Shera, and other several films before Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer would prove to be a turning point in his career. It established his image as an Angry Young Man. Films like Abhimaan, Namak Haraam, Majboor, Kasauti, Benaam, Chupke, Chupke, Farar, Deewar and the highest grosser of 1975, Sholay are just a speck in the vast repertoire of films which consolidated his position as an one man army in the annals of Indian cinema. He made his Hollywood debut in a cameo as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby. He has received the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan; civilian awards conferred by the Indian government. He has won nine Screen Awards in the past, which includes Jodi No. 1 along with Hema Malini for Baghban (2003), Screen Distinction In Acting Award for Baghban (2003), Screen Most Outstanding Personality (2004), and The Legend of Indian Cinema Award (2013).
He became the first Indian actor to carry the Olympic Torch during the last leg of its relay in 2012. In June 2000, he became the first living Asian to have been modelled in wax at London’s Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. His charismatic personality and enigma remains intact, even as he continues to dominate not only the big screen, but also television as a host of the popular quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati and as an active blogger with his interactions with his fans in the virtual world.

“The grace and honour with which colleagues and friends, and all those behind the scene workers, commemorate the 45 years of my existence in this wonderful world of films, can never have sufficient words to fill that immortal cup of gratitude.It is the most awkward moment in one’s life when an honour is announced and there are those that have worked and been close to you, asked to say a few words. Perhaps it is easier for those that express, it certainly is not the most easiest for him that has to sit in not too great a distance, to listen and wait for that call from the stage to come up and get it! Get the reward… One never knows whether to smile, or applaud or simply hide your face and disappear from the moment. It has occurred to me several times, on many such occasions, when I would have wished not to have been the recipient of such recognition, to have just wished it was someone else that was getting it and given me the impetus to stay back and acknowledge another. But it did not happen, at the Screen Awards. At the award I sat through accolades being poured out speaker after speaker, not knowing what I must do with my hands my clothes and my expressions …and by the end of it all, it is a sigh of immense relief.”
— blogged Amitabh Bachchan on Bachchan Bol