Amitabh Bachchan is embarrassed. A television scribe has pinned the megastar down on a couch and is grilling him about his 19-year old Nishabd co-star, Jiah Khan’s public declaration of love. There is also a reference to Khan’s statement that Mr B smells very nice, so nice that she can smell him from a good distance.

“What can I say? I take it as a compliment coming from an innocent young girl. I mean, she’s half my daughter’s age,” he says all red-faced.

Come Friday Mr B’s going to romance her in the Ram Gopal Varma film. Then in May, he woos Tabu in the caustic romcom Cheeni Kam. All in all, it’s romance time for the angry young man turned Bollywood’s best known patriarch.

“Well, variety is the spice of life. I was getting a little tired of playing the patriarch in all my films. I realised that if I continue to do it then it would be the end of me as an actor. I’m fortunate that these films came my way,” says the 64-year-old actor. Since his comeback in 2000, save the occasional Baghban with Hema Malini, Bachchan has steered away from romance. It was just a matter of time before film-makers latched on to this untapped Bachchan pool.

now a days actors are looking forward to work in the films based on the broad concepts.