Bollywood Goes Global

Newsweek, February, 2000 by Carla Power and Sudip Mazumdar (With Anna Kuchment in New York, Gameela Ismail in Cairo, Ginanne Brownell in London, Robina Riccitiello in Silicon Valley, Catharine Skipp in Miami and Kate N. Grossman in Chicago)

Tom Cruise didn't even make the list. Marilyn Monroe finished ninth, and Sir Lawrence Olivier was runner-up. In a worldwide BBC Online poll last year on the millennium's biggest star, the winner was a 57-year-old man born in Allahabad, India. Ambitabh Bachchan--or "The Big B" to millions of Indian-film fans--has been a megastar for three decades.

His devotees, found everywhere from Rajasthani villages to Australian cities to New Jersey suburbs, are a passionate lot. "When you are incapable of achieving your dreams--even 1 percent of them--you can achieve them with Bachchan," says Mohammed Galal, a 19-year-old Egyptian law student, emerging from a packed Cairo screening of Bachchan's box-office hit "To Defend Love." When Planet Hollywood opened in Dubai in 1998, investor Sylvester Stallone showed up for the celebrations. Unfortunately for him, so did Bachchan. The crowds mobbed the Indian action hero--and pretty much ignored Rambo. ...