The
strayer has become a player. The reclusive actor has evolved into a
smartly packaged star. The record- breaking run of 3 Idiots has sealed
his status as the guru of good fortune.
He
quit studies after Intermediate at Mumbai’s N.M. College much to his
parents’ horror, choosing to work as an assistant director for four
years. After his pin-up worthy debut in 1988, he wept every day coming
home from work, convinced that the nine films he had signed in a rush
would crash his career. Then in 2002, after he separated from Reena,
his wife of 16 years, every alternative weekend he would see his
children. Not what you would call the perfect ingredients for success.
But Aamir Hussain Khan, all 44 years and 5 ft 7 inches of him, his
wife’s diamond studs twinkling in ears pierced for Lagaan, has always
swum against the tide.
Only now the tide seems to be swimming with
him. He’s just starred in 3 Idiots, a film that has been breaking box
office records at home and abroad, making Rs 240 crore in 10 days and
still counting. His last four films, released over three successive
years, Rang De Basanti, Fanaa, Taare Zameen Par and Ghajini, made a
collective box office revenue of over Rs 590 crore. He makes an average
of Rs 10 crore a year from each of the six brands he endorses. The way
he marketed Ghajini will now be taught as part of a course in film
marketing at IIM-Ahmedabad. The profit he is contemplating from 3
Idiots, as a result of a wise decision to forego his fees and split the
profit three ways between producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, director Raju
Hirani and himself, will be over Rs 20 crore. But more than that, his
films have consistently hit a nerve with audiences, either getting them
to participate in candlelight vigils inspired by Rang De Basanti, treat
children with greater sensitivity as in Tare Zameen Par or even cause
them to bulk up their bodies as in Ghajini. In an industry ripped apart
by camps, he is his own institution, working with untested new
directors (Farhan Akhtar in Dil Chahta Hai) and even failed filmmakers
(Ashutosh Gowariker, who had two flops behind him, in Lagaan). He’s
been a producer for the smash hit Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na which starred
his nephew and made Rs 115 crore at the box office, a director for
Taare Zameen Par and even the unofficial CEO of Ghajini Inc. He shuns
the awards circus and has never been seen in public performing song and
dance routines. Yet his decision to act in one movie at a time is now a
mass mantra and a sure career cure. His help was sought in resolving
the two-month stand-off with multiplexes last year. And equally, his
move to not charge a fee for 3 Idiots could set off a trend of stars
putting their talent where their mouth is in these leaner, meaner times.
Yet as he sits folded up in his favourite chair in the projection room
of his home, two floors below his mother’s home where he was born and
brought up, it is hard to think of the word superstar. He exudes an
aura, but the room is more suited to that of a messy student, with
books such as Katherine Frank’s Indira to Abraham Verghese’s The Tennis
Partner sharing shelf space with PC games and Bob Dylan and Sufi
qawwali CDs. The make-up room is stacked with the tools of his trade,
from spare costumes to a wigmaker’s dummy. And the terminal above his
computer has chronologically labelled scripts.
The actor recently talks about how he lost weight for his role of
Rancho in 3 Idiots, which director Rajkumar Hirani rewrote for Khan, he
speaks of how he modelled the 17-year-old on the boyish director of
Ghajini, A.R. Murugadoss, and his 14-year-old nephew Pablo, who can
never sit still. He jumps up to demonstrate, as he often does in his
exuberance, contorting his body like an over-active teenager. “But
Rancho was also dangerous because he is without a flaw. The audience’s
heart doesn’t go out to such a guy. So I made him curious rather than
cocky,” he says. Thinking deeply about his character is something Khan
has done increasingly, whether it is Bhuvan’s stance in Lagaan, with
his with his weight evenly distributed on his legs to suggest inner
strength, or Aakash’s darting eyes in Dil Chahta Hai indicating what a
shallow layabout he is.
Khan is a star who doesn’t play himself in every film, as Amitabh
Bachchan did at the height of his fame or Shah Rukh Khan tends to do.
He plays the character, which may be why he tends to work with new
directors, who help in creating a fresh persona every time. “Audiences
now expect an element of surprise from him,” points out Kabir. “Like a
magician, they want him to conjure up a new character.” Once he has
identified the perfect script, a director whose vision he shares, and a
producer who will back it, Khan surrenders himself to the moment.
There’s no spillover, no hangover. Everything apart from the movie goes
into a soft focus. “When I read a script, it just goes straight to my
brain,” he says. “It’s like a computer in its memory. It just soaks
everything in and then it’s in my head at all times,” he adds, even as
he acts out the first part he got in a play in Class XII. It was a line
as a painter in a Gujarati play, a role he couldn’t actually perform
because he was sacked for missing a day of rehearsals. The line remains
etched in his hard drive. He repeats it now: “Bloody hell, no one
marries me. I wish his mother gets married to a dog.”
On the sets, Khan is a trooper. He will hang out even when he doesn’t
have lines, or just play scrabble with the assistants. He will promote
the film across the country on every media he can find. And he will
just not want to go home. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who directed him in
Rang De Basanti, and has been a friend since, says, “He makes himself
completely accessible to the filmmaker.” Kunal Kohli, who directed him
in Fanaa, recalls how Khan was apologetic even asking him for four days
off in the middle of the shoot in Mumbai in 2005 because he wanted to
get married to Kiran Rao, a highly rated assistant director. “He’s
there whether it is for readings or costume trials,” adds Kohli. “And
he’s just incredibly intelligent. How many people do you know who can
solve the Rubik’s cube with one hand?”
