Mumbai: Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan says older men often are attracted to younger women, just like the character he portrays in a new movie.

Bachchan, 64, stars with 19-year-old newcomer Jiah Khan in the movie Nishabd, or Wordless, directed by well-known filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma.

It is to hit screens next week.

Varma said recently that the film is inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel Lolita, but that his characters are driven by a May-December love, not sexual obsession.

''No one can deny these kinds of associations happen in real life,'' Bachchan said in an interview with the Mumbai-based DNA newspaper published Wednesday.

''I appreciate beauty.'' ''I have obviously been attracted, you do appreciate a woman but it need not necessarily materialize into something more,'' he said. While describing himself as ''a very passionate man,'' Bachchan said most often his head ruled his heart.

Bachchan has acted in about 160 movies in a career spanning three decades in India's prolific film industry located in Mumbai, formerly called Bombay. In his latest movie Eklavya, he plays a royal bodyguard in an action thriller about a royal family.