Amitabh Bachchan became the archetype of the ‘angry young man’ in Indian cinema with ‘Zanjeer’. The film became a cult. However, Amitabh Bachchan was not the first choice for the role. In fact, many top actors including Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra had rejected it. In fact, when Amitabh Bachchan was offered the role, he did not have many options.

In the documentary series ‘Angry Young Men’, it was reported that many actors rejected ‘Zanjeer’ because it had no songs and the character of the protagonist was written completely new for the Hindi film industry.

“After ‘Zanjeer’ a new hero came in the (Hindi) film industry. This is a new hero. A hero who does not sing, does not romance, does not do comedy, doesn’t give a shit Salim Khan said, “He doesn’t talk nonsense. The other characters were doing all this. But the hero was not doing that.”

Javed Akhtar said, “You should be honest to the character, without pushing the character forward as per the need of your story. Then the honesty of your character increases, and you can give it authenticity and a third dimension. If we had made Amitabh Bachchan sing 2-3 songs in ‘Zanjeer’, you would not have remembered ‘Angry Young Man’ today.”

Actor Sachin Pilgaonkar explained why Dev Anand refused to be a part of the film and said, “You must remember that Vijay doesn’t have a single song. That’s why Dev (Anand) Sir He refused to act in it. He refused after hearing the script because he felt, ‘The audience will not accept Dev without songs!’”

Javed Akhtar also said, “Every hero rejected the film. Director Prakash Mehra was producing this film, it was his debut production, but he did not make any changes to the script, even though we were not big writers at that time. We became famous only after Zanjeer. He remained faithful to the script. This is easier said than done, but it takes courage to do it.”

See Trailer of ‘Angry Young Men’,

When Amitabh Bachchan was offered ‘Zanjeer’, he was struggling with a string of flops. According to senior film journalist Bhavana Somaiya, Bachchan did not have many options and most female actresses did not want to work with him.

Jaya Bachchan worked with Amitabh Bachchan in this film. She said, “I did not want to do ‘Zanjeer’.” She further added, “I basically never wanted to be a part of male-centric cinema. It was a male-centric film.” But, she eventually did it because it meant spending more time with Big B, who was her fiancé at the time.

She also said, “Salim sahab and Javed sahab, they were very straightforward. They had tried several other female actors, but of course, they had all refused. And they said, ‘You can’t refuse, we need you’. Of course, another temptation was my co-star. So I thought at least we will spend some time together.”

“Angry Young Men” is now streaming on Prime Video from August 20.