Thestrayer has become a player. The reclusive actor has evolved into asmartly packaged star. The record- breaking run of 3 Idiots has sealedhis status as the guru of good fortune.Hequit studies after Intermediate at Mumbai’s N.M. College much to hisparents’ horror, choosing to work as an assistant director for fouryears. After his pin-up worthy debut in 1988, he wept every day cominghome from work, convinced that the nine films he had signed in a rushwould crash his career. Then in 2002, after he separated from Reena,his wife of 16 years, every alternative weekend he would see hischildren. Not what you would call the perfect ingredients for success.But Aamir Hussain Khan, all 44 years and 5 ft 7 inches of him, hiswife’s diamond studs twinkling in ears pierced for Lagaan, has alwaysswum against the tide.
Only now the tide seems to be swimming withhim. He’s just starred in 3 Idiots, a film that has been breaking boxoffice records at home and abroad, making Rs 240 crore in 10 days andstill counting. His last four films, released over three successiveyears, Rang De Basanti, Fanaa, Taare Zameen Par and Ghajini, made acollective box office revenue of over Rs 590 crore. He makes an averageof Rs 10 crore a year from each of the six brands he endorses. The wayhe marketed Ghajini will now be taught as part of a course in filmmarketing at IIM-Ahmedabad. The profit he is contemplating from 3Idiots, as a result of a wise decision to forego his fees and split theprofit three ways between producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, director RajuHirani and himself, will be over Rs 20 crore. But more than that, hisfilms have consistently hit a nerve with audiences, either getting themto participate in candlelight vigils inspired by Rang De Basanti, treatchildren with greater sensitivity as in Tare Zameen Par or even causethem to bulk up their bodies as in Ghajini. In an industry ripped apartby camps, he is his own institution, working with untested newdirectors (Farhan Akhtar in Dil Chahta Hai) and even failed filmmakers(Ashutosh Gowariker, who had two flops behind him, in Lagaan). He’sbeen a producer for the smash hit Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na which starredhis nephew and made Rs 115 crore at the box office, a director forTaare Zameen Par and even the unofficial CEO of Ghajini Inc. He shunsthe awards circus and has never been seen in public performing song anddance routines. Yet his decision to act in one movie at a time is now amass mantra and a sure career cure. His help was sought in resolvingthe two-month stand-off with multiplexes last year. And equally, hismove to not charge a fee for 3 Idiots could set off a trend of starsputting their talent where their mouth is in these leaner, meaner times.
Yet as he sits folded up in his favourite chair in the projection roomof his home, two floors below his mother’s home where he was born andbrought up, it is hard to think of the word superstar. He exudes anaura, but the room is more suited to that of a messy student, withbooks such as Katherine Frank’s Indira to Abraham Verghese’s The TennisPartner sharing shelf space with PC games and Bob Dylan and Sufiqawwali 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 hiscomputer has chronologically labelled scripts.
The actor recently talks about how he lost weight for his role ofRancho in 3 Idiots, which director Rajkumar Hirani rewrote for Khan, hespeaks of how he modelled the 17-year-old on the boyish director ofGhajini, A.R. Murugadoss, and his 14-year-old nephew Pablo, who cannever sit still. He jumps up to demonstrate, as he often does in hisexuberance, contorting his body like an over-active teenager. “ButRancho was also dangerous because he is without a flaw. The audience’sheart doesn’t go out to such a guy. So I made him curious rather thancocky,” he says. Thinking deeply about his character is something Khanhas done increasingly, whether it is Bhuvan’s stance in Lagaan, withhis with his weight evenly distributed on his legs to suggest innerstrength, or Aakash’s darting eyes in Dil Chahta Hai indicating what ashallow layabout he is.
Khan is a star who doesn’t play himself in every film, as AmitabhBachchan 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 newdirectors, who help in creating a fresh persona every time. “Audiencesnow expect an element of surprise from him,” points out Kabir. “Like amagician, they want him to conjure up a new character.” Once he hasidentified the perfect script, a director whose vision he shares, and aproducer who will back it, Khan surrenders himself to the moment.There’s no spillover, no hangover. Everything apart from the movie goesinto a soft focus. “When I read a script, it just goes straight to mybrain,” he says. “It’s like a computer in its memory. It just soakseverything in and then it’s in my head at all times,” he adds, even ashe acts out the first part he got in a play in Class XII. It was a lineas a painter in a Gujarati play, a role he couldn’t actually performbecause he was sacked for missing a day of rehearsals. The line remainsetched in his hard drive. He repeats it now: “Bloody hell, no onemarries 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’thave lines, or just play scrabble with the assistants. He will promotethe film across the country on every media he can find. And he willjust not want to go home. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who directed him inRang De Basanti, and has been a friend since, says, “He makes himselfcompletely accessible to the filmmaker.” Kunal Kohli, who directed himin Fanaa, recalls how Khan was apologetic even asking him for four daysoff in the middle of the shoot in Mumbai in 2005 because he wanted toget married to Kiran Rao, a highly rated assistant director. “He’sthere whether it is for readings or costume trials,” adds Kohli. “Andhe’s just incredibly intelligent. How many people do you know who cansolve the Rubik’s cube with one hand?”