Abhishek Bachchan once worked as Arshad Warsi’s driver, cleaned studio floors?
Being the son of Bollywood legends Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan, one would think Abhishek Bachchan’s first film was handed to him on a platter. However, in a BAFTA interview in 2010, he said that he worked as a production assistant before becoming an actor and did all kinds of odd jobs on set. Abhishek, who made his Bollywood debut opposite Kareena Kapoor Khan with JP Dutta’s critically acclaimed drama Refugee in 2000, said, “It took me two years to get a film.” He said that before getting a break in films, he worked in the production team. “I was a production boy making tea and cleaning studio floors. I was also Arshad Warsi’s driver,” he said, according to the Manchester Evening News. For the first three years of his career, Abhishek saw little success. He said that he did not want to leave his home during that time, when film after film failed at the box office. “I used to stick my bad reviews on the mirror and work on the things critics did not like,” he said. The success of Mani Ratnam’s Yuva and Sanjay Gadhvi’s Dhoom was a turning point in Abhishek’s career. Since then, he has been a part of several hits including the Dhoom series, Guru, Bunty Aur Babli, Paa and Bol Bachchan. Abhishek will be seen next in Anurag Basu’s crime anthology Ludo, which also stars Sanya Malhotra, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Rajkummar Rao, Aditya Roy Kapur and Pankaj Tripathi. Reports suggest that the film might see a direct-to-digital release in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Apart from this, Abhishek has Kookie Gulati’s The Big Bull in the pipeline, in which he reportedly plays a stockbroker modelled on Harshad Mehta. He will also be seen playing the titular role in Diya Annapurna Ghosh’s Bob Biswas, a spin-off to the 2012 hit Kahaani and the origin story of the insurance agent moonlighting as a contract killer.