BOLLYWOOD STAR SHAH RUKH KHAN ON SURPRISING CAREER MOVES

Shah Rukh Khan is the biggest star in Bollywood—but his appeal is global. His movies have grossed $300 million worldwide, he counts Hollywood stars among his fans and in 2016 he was named the eighth highest-paid actor in the world. Back home in India, the media call him “King Khan” and the “Badshah of Bollywood” because of his success at the box office over the last quarter century; his first film in 1992 was the second highest-grossing in India that year. The South Asian diaspora has helped carry his name across the globe—his films regularly chart inside the top 10 of the U.S. box office and he has a devoted following in Russia and Germany. His celebrity fans include pop singer Shakira, Penelope Cruz and Hugh Jackman. He is a bonafide superstar. But as he approaches 25 years as Bollywood’s ambassador to the world, Khan finds himself at a point of transition in his career. Khan is 51, and no longer the young heartthrob with the perfectly coiffed hair and rippling six-pack that won him roles in the 1990s. (Though his hair is still perfectly coiffed and, he claims, the six-pack is still there.) His latest film, Dear Zindagi , has more in common with an offbeat independent drama than the song-and-dance blockbusters he is renowned for, he says. The film follows budding cinematographer Kaira, played by rising Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt, whose methodical approach to achieving the perfect life is overturned when she meets the bohemian Jug (Khan). “I’ve never done a film like this,” Khan tells Newsweek over the phone from Mumbai. “It’s calmer, it [requires] a lot more patience, a lot more gravitas…It’s not a star vehicle; hopefully it’s a vehicle that lends itself more to performance.” Whether in Bollywood or Hollywood, this attitude is not unusual when it comes to veteran actors with mostly commercial credits looking to prove their acting credibility in the last phase of their career—someone like Michael Keaton, for instance. But Khan says that isn’t his motivation: “It’s very simple, and I think that simplicity has kept me going: I feel funny sometimes, so I do a funny film. I wake up and say, ‘This is what I’m feeling,’ and I go out and do it. That’s the only way to be; you don’t sit down and plan out because then it’ll get boring.” Read more