Indian screen legend Amitabh Bachchan says he enjoys star-filled family

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Indian star says he enjoys actor-filled family

HONG KONG — After a long day on set, some actors look forward to escaping from the industry and kicking back with outsiders. Not Amitabh Bachchan.

The Indian screen legend is married to a fellow actor. His son is one, as is his daughter-in-law. And there’s nothing the 67-year-old veteran actor loves more than talking shop with his loved ones.

“There are four artists in my family. We are very happy with this. Every morning, we get up, we pick up our makeup bags and we go off to our studios,” Bachchan told reporters in Hong Kong on Tuesday, a day after he received the lifetime achievement award at the fourth Asian Film Awards.

“It’s wonderful to have all of us working together. We sit and discuss projects. We talk about each other’s films. We criticize them. We applaud them. It’s a very happy atmosphere at home,” he said.

Bachchan took family connections to another level in a recent project. In last year’s “Paa,” he played a youngster with a genetic defect that makes him look like an old man. His real-life son, Abhishek, portrayed the boy’s father.

“It was a very, very unique experience for all of us,” Bachchan said.

The actor’s wife is Jaya Bhaduri, who is also a politician. His son is married to Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World who’s one of India’s most famous female faces.

Bachchan said while he welcomes the increasing popularity of Indian cinema abroad, he doesn’t think Indian filmmakers should bend over backward to broaden their appeal to foreigners — such as watering down the song-and-dance numbers the industry is best known for.

“I hope they don’t change,” he said. “I know that the West is very critical and very cynical about our content, being too fantasized. But that hasn’t deterred us from making the kind of films we make.”

“I don’t think we deliberately go out and make films so that somebody from another nation would come and watch it. … We would lose our originality and I would like to maintain that,” he said.