THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

One did feel a slight pang when Bachchan’s Hollywood debut turned out to be nothing more than a blink-and-you-miss part. However, The Great Gatsby makes it to this list because it hardly gets bigger than Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Maguire in a Baz Luhrmann film. Bachchan, as the shady but suave Meyer Wolfsheim, brought spark to his part, doing the film for free as a gesture. We had hoped The Great Gatsby would pave the way for more Holly outings for the actor, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.

PIKU (2015)

It’s safe to say that no one could have played the caustic, eccentric Bengali septuagenarian as memorably as Amitabh Bachchan did in this Shoojit Sircar film which may have been named Piku — after Deepika Padukone’s protagonist — but was also powered by Bachchan’s Bhaskor Banerjee. A victim of chronic constipation and a hypochondriac to boot, Bhaskor’s favourite pastime is to discuss — in great detail, right down to colour and texture — his daily (sometimes, not so daily) bowel habits, giving rise to the film’s most hilarious moments.

Bachchan’s solid and deeply felt act ensured that the father-daughter equation in the film — argumentative and exasperating but also laced with love and care — was extremely relatable. And who can top the man gleefully shaking a leg at midnight, paunch in place, to the Manna Dey hit Jibone ki pabo na?

SHAMITABH (2015)

The Bachchan baritone is legendary, but it took five decades and a few more years for a film to pay tribute to it. And a tribute Shamitabh definitely was — starting right from its name — coming as it was from the vision of Bachchan fanboy R. Balki. A look at the magic of cinema and the rise and fall of an individual brought on by ego and hubris, Shamitabh had the man in his element — fascinating, volatile, magnetic, and ultimately, vintage Bachchan.

PINK (2016)

Pink was the story of three women challenging patriarchal mindsets and uncovering uncomfortable truths, with Bachchan’s Deepak Segal, a retired lawyer who returns to court, proving to be the wind beneath their wings. Grizzled and slightly creepy at first, Segal comes into his own after the first hour. Even when he pontificates in court you want to hear it because it’s Bachchan doing only what Bachchan can, right down to ‘No means no’. His innate ability to seamlessly switch between dead serious and deadpan humour was in full form here.

102 not out (2018)

Bachchan was too cool for school, playing the 102-year-old rock star dad to his 75-year-old grumpy son, played by Rishi Kapoor. The man had fun doing the part, singing and dancing and tapping into his talent for theatricality when needed like never before. We had fun watching him. The film, not so much.

BADLA (2019)

Few can beat Bachchan when it comes to a conversational part, and director Sujoy Ghosh gave his idol a role where the whole film rested on the thrust and parry between Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu’s characters. Bachchan, armed with a sharp suit and a sharper smirk, was on familiar turf here, his silences speaking as impactfully as his words. “Kya main wahin chhay dekh raha hoon jo tumne mujhe dikhaya ya woh nau jo mujhe dekhna chahiye tha?”

GULABO SITABO (2020)

Most of Bachchan’s best turns in recent years have invariably come under the direction of Shoojit Sircar. This pitch-perfect satire set in Lucknow buried Bachchan under layers of prosthetics and rendered him unrecognisable, with Mirza proving to be one of the most interesting characters he’s played of late. Mirza wasn’t likable — marked by insecurity and prejudice — but it is to the man’s credit that at the end, your heart did go out a little to him. He embraced the character not only in body but also in body language.

JHUND (2022)

Like most of his films, Bachchan was the beating heart of Jhund. Directed by Nagraj Manjule, the man known for his searing films on caste and socio-political divide, Jhund had the actor banding together a ragtag team of football players comprising wayward youngsters from a slum. It’s telling that his name was Vijay — a screen name he’s become synonymous with — and it was Bachchan who stood tall in Jhund, both literally and figuratively. “Kuch log thak jaate hain lekin Vijay sir kabhi nahin thakte,” says a character in the film. The same can be said about the man who spins screen magic out of nowhere, each time and every time.