Bollywood icon finds religious side

Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan says he has become religious after lifelong medical problems.

The star has suffered from a crippling neuromuscular disease and a filming accident that mangled a hand, a newspaper reported.

Bachchan, a Hindu, is the most recognisable face in India's Bollywood, the world's biggest movie industry by audience numbers and the number of films it churns out.

He has appeared in more than 150 movies over three decades.

"The amount of things I have been through and the remarkable ways in which the body has reacted is just phenomenal," Bachchan told The Times of India newspaper in rare comments on his health.

"No wonder I became religious, because you don't know why something's happening to you and you don't know how you bounced back," he added.

Bachchan's most recent ailment was an intestinal inflammation that led to surgery last year.

Fans crowded outside the Bombay hospital where he was being treated and flocked to temples to pray for him.