He's been crowned the biggest film star in the world, but Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan is little known in the west.

Simply because the west has not seen it says Richard Pena, professor of film studies at Columbia University and an organiser of the Lincoln Center retrospective.

"American audiences would warm to commercial Indian cinema if they had more exposure to it."

The Big B though certainly has no illusions or regrets about the limitations of his fame and celebrity.

The subject of a week-long film retrospective at New York's Lincoln Center, Bachchan, 62, enjoys a vast international fan base from South Asia to the Middle East and Africa.

The dozen movies on offer at the Bachchan retrospective represent just a tiny fraction of his prolific output which comprises over 150 films spanning three decades.

Though among mainstream western audiences, including American filmgoers, he remains largely unknown. It's a state of affairs he loses little sleep over.

"You know, I just never really expected it," Bachchan said with a shrug, adding that Hollywood never exerted that much of a pull."

"I think that every actor who sets off, thinks about his home first. If I was starting off now, I would remain home. That's where my eyes would be".

Such was Bachchan's pre-eminence as a movie star in the 1970s and 80s in India that he appeared to carry the entire Indian film industry on his imposing six-foot, two-inch frame.

The adoration of his millions of fans has, at times, verged on religious worship.

In 1982, as Bachchan lay in the intensive care after an accident on a film set, thousands of people gathered every day outside the hospital in Bombay to pray for his recovery.

The then Indian PM Indira Gandhi visited his hospital bed, and one fan even ran backwards for around 805 kms as a devotional gesture to prevent his death.

Voted as "world's greatest film star" at a 1999 BBC online poll Big B was even ahead of Charlie Chaplin and Laurence Olivier.

"Obviously this is unbelievable. It should not be taken seriously," he said. What he does take seriously is his craft in acting.

An eloquent defender of popular Indian cinema, Bachchan believes that the Indian cinema has carved out a place for itself and is "finding the place and audience that it deserves".

With its melodramatic storylines and song-and-dance routines Indian cinema has often been dismissed in the West as trivial and formulaic.

Though he does believe in adapting the style of Indian cinema that would to the western tastes he said "It would be sad if they were to be any less Indian."

"Either the West realises that this is what Indian films are all about and says 'Okay, we like it and we're going to watch it', or it doesn't and it rejects it," he said. "Either way, we shouldn't change what makes our films so unique."

After a slump in the 1990s, Bachchan's career has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, due in part to a hugely successful move into television as host of the Indian version of the quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

With interest in Indian cinema growing overseas, Bachchan is also optimistic that the domestic industry can survive the box-office challenge posed by imported Hollywood blockbusters.

"India is a vast country, and I think the common man that goes to the movies will still prefer the Indian stuff," he said. "There's still a long way to go before that changes, if indeed it ever does."

Bachchan said he might consider doing a Hollywood film if the offer was right, but Pena believes racial stereotyping in western films has been a major factor in keeping the star firmly attached to his domestic roots.

"I think he's always been conscious of the idea that he didn't want to come to Hollywood and play 'the Indian'," Pena said.

And Bachchan says it will be some time before a Indian star, or an actor of South Asian origin, finds himself cast in a leading role in Hollywood.

"South Asians are still strongly identified with certain images, of the corner store owner or the taxi driver, the doctor or the maharaja," he said.

"In American society, there will have to be a lot more visibility for them to find some recognisable space."