MUMBAI : Actor Manoj Bajpayee says he drew inspiration from the mega star Amitabh Bachchan as well as his contemporaries Shatrughan Sinha and Vinod Khanna to play a massy hero in his upcoming film “Bhaiyya Ji”.

Also read - Bhaiyya Ji: Lead Manoj Bajpayee says, ‘life has been kind that I'm here with my 100th film...’

The revenge action film is directed by Apoorva Singh Karki, who earlier directed the actor in the critically-acclaimed movie “Sirf Ek Banda Kaafi Hai”.

In the movie, the actor is playing the titular role, a man out to avenge his brother's death.

“I grew up watching commercial films and all the big stars of that time, they were all my inspiration, be it Shatru ji , Vinod Khanna ji, Amit ji or Jeetendra Sahab and all of them. It happened subconsciously. I knew that I had to do certain things to make him look attractive on screen. So that everyone would like to be a figure like Bhaiyya Ji.

"He is an inspirational force. The audience should look up to him. So that is why I got all of those mannerisms in playing Bhaiyya ji,” Bajpayee told PTI in an interview.

As a child, the actor said, whenever he watched a mainstream action film, he used to feel like a hero.

“This is what a commercial film does to the audience. The adrenaline rush, the excitement, the energy flow. Everyone starts feeling like a hero when they come out . This is the purpose of a good commercial film,” he said.

When it comes to labels like superstar or action star, Bajpayee said he considers himself a "desi actor".

“I am definitely a desi actor... I desire our culture, villages and the story of our soil should come in the mainstream cinema. Our heroes should look like us, not from some western country. We need to make good films with good stories and that need to be rooted in our culture,” he added.

Bajpayee said he has done majority of the action sequences and credited action choreographer Fefsi Vijayan for pushing him as an artiste.

“It has been a very difficult film to shoot because most of the action scenes are done by me. Fefsi Vijayan, who is such a legend from the Tamil industry, is the one who was a tough taskmaster. He wanted Manoj Bajpayee to do all the actions and he was not ready to compromise at all... I'm so happy that he pushed me hard because everything is looking so amazing on the screen.”

Also read - Bhaiyya Ji: Lead Manoj Bajpayee says, ‘life has been kind that I'm here with my 100th film...’

“Bhaiyya Ji” is the 100th film of Bajpayee's career, which is filled with some of the most critically-acclaimed movies of the last two decades "Satya", "Shool", "Raajneeti", "Gangs of Wasseypur", "Aligarh", "Gali Guleiyan", "Bhonsle", "Sonchiriya" and "Joram".

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Credits - Hindustan Times