Smita Patil felt awkward about films she did with me: Amitabh Bachchan

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan reveals actor Smita Patil had a bad dream about him a day before he met with a major accident on the sets of his 1983 hit Coolie. The 73-year-old actor suffered a near-fatal accident while shooting an action scene for Manmohan Desai’s Coolie in Bangalore in 1982, which took him several months to fully recover.

Bachchan shared the anecdote at the launch of Maithili Rao’s book “Smita Patil: A Brief Incandescence”, on Sunday, to mark the actor’s 60th birth anniversary. “I was in Bangalore shooting for Coolie once. Late into the night at around 2 am I received call in my hotel room. The receptionist informed me that it was Smita Patil on the line. I was shocked as I had never spoken or talked to her at such a time. Thinking that it would be important one, I answered,” Bachchan said.

“Smita asked me if I was alright and in good health. I answered yes and she said that she just had a bad dream about me and that’s the reason behind calling up so late in the night. The next day I had my accident,” he said.

Read: A biopic on me will flop, says Bachchan

The Sholay star finds it interesting that Patil’s films with him were against the “culture and thinking” of the actor. “When it comes to do doing cinema (films) with me, she did things that were against her nature like in Namak Halal she had to do rain dance with me. She felt it was away from her culture and thinking,” he said.

“She told me she had worked in so many good films but once when she was at the airport she felt bit awkward and embarrassed that people remembered her for Namak Halal,” the actor said

Bachchan’s actress-politician wife Jaya and Shabana Azmi were among the other attendants at the event. Big B, who was the chief guest at the event, remembered Patil with great fondness. The duo shared screen space in films like Namak Halal, Shakti and Ghulami.

“I always fall short of words when asked to speak of Smita or our association. There was this unusual way of how she conducted herself, her life. I had the opportunity of working with her, she looked gentle but she was a strong woman. She was committed not only towards her work but to her beliefs,” he said.