New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) Bikram Saluja has revisited “The Godfather” and “Raging Bull” in a glossy coffee table book that has him posing against backdrops of the two iconic Hollywood films. The model-turned-actor says that he is honoured that megastar Amitabh Bachchan has written the forward.
“When the book was finally done, I wanted someone to write its introduction and who better than the biggest star Amitabh Bachchan himself,” Bikram told IANS in an interview.

“I sent a message to him saying that it would be an honour for me if he writes the forward. He asked for the book and wrote the introduction in a month. I was so glad because he is truly an inspiration and for him to find my book worthy was really great,” he added.

The book, which is a limited edition collector’s volume, is called “An Actor’s Inspiration” and has been conceptualised and interpreted by Bikram himself. He recreated the sets inspired by “Godfather” and “Raging Bull” and has posed against them.

“I have interpreted two characters from the two films - from ‘Godfather’ it’s Michael Corleone, which was played by Al Pacino, and from ‘The Raging Bull’ it’s Jake La Motta played by Robert De Niro. I have done my own interpretation of the two film characters through still photography,” he said.

Bikram roped in noted photographers Ronny Sequeira and Hardeep Sachdev to click the pictures.

The actor, who has worked in films like “Fiza”, “Page 3″ and “Umrao Jaan”, always wanted to share screen space with Amitabh and is elated at least getting to share page space with him.

“It was very generous of him to take out time and write the forward for my film. I always wanted to work with him, but never got a chance. So I’m very happy that through this book I at least got to share space with him on paper.”

Bikram says it took him four years to complete the project. It was hard work and He admits that a lot of hard work and time was required for its successful completion.

“There were many problems that we had to face while working on this book. It was not easy to convert moving images in still photography and still maintain the flow of the film.

“Another thing was that it took almost a year to get permission from Paramount Pictures (’The Godfather’) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, MGM (’Raging Bull’) to interpret these two classics,” he said.

So did he lose out on any important film while giving his full attention to this book?

“In these four years I didn’t get time for anything else. I was completely cut off from the outside world. However, I did not lose out on any good opportunity since no good film was offered to me during that period. If something very interesting would have come up, I would have been motivated to take time off and do the film,” he said.

Now that the book has been launched, Bikram is planning to spend time with his family. He eventually plans to write few scripts and turn to direction.