Actor Abhishek Bachchan has found his niche of late, but he had a torrid time early in his career. Son of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek was plagued by comparisons with his dad and a spate of flops in the first few years of his career. It got to a point where Abhishek decided to quit films, only to be pulled back by Big B himself.
In a conversation with Nayandeep Rakshit for his YouTube channel, Abhishek revealed that at the beginning of his career, he felt he wasn’t ‘able to achieve whatever I wanted to achieve and match the standards that I had set for myself’. Perturbed by all this, he decided to quit films.
Abhishek Bachchan on Amitabh Bachchan’s advice
“I remember going to my father one night and saying that I have made a mistake and no matter what I am trying, it is not working. Maybe, this is the way of the world telling me that this is not for you. He was amazing. He said, ‘I am telling you as an actor and not your father, you have a long way to go, you are nowhere near the finished product but you are improving with every film. Just keep working and you will get there’. And, as I was walking out of the room, he said that I did not bring you up to be a quiter, so keep fighting. That meant a lot,” he added.
Talking about how he learnt to live with failure and learn from it, Abhishek added, “With time, you learn a lot and experience teaches you so much. If you look at it, we all are fighting a losing battle. At the end of the day, none of us is getting out of this gig alive. You will fail, you just have to fail forward. Failure is an integral step to success. Without failure, there’s never going to be success. That’s the way I have looked at it.”
Abhishek Bachchan’s film career
Abhishek Bachchan made his debut with JP Dutta’s Refugee in 2000 but the film tanked. His next dozen odd releases did not work at the box office too. Things turned around for Abhishek in 2004 with Dhoom. The same year, he won critical acclaim with Yuva. Over the next few years, he found success in films like Dus, Dhoom 2, Yuva, Bluffmaster, and Dostana. The actor’s latest film, Be Happy, released on Amazon Prime Video on March 14.
