‘WHY SHOULD I FOLLOW SOMEONE?’

King Khan talks about how his stardom makes him brave

It’s silly to not do what one wants, especially for someone like me who has achieved a certain status SHAH RUKH KHAN, ACTOR

Actor Shah Rukh Khan says his fame and stardom will be of no use if he finds himself getting affected by the success of his contemporaries. The 51-year-old actor shrugs when asked how difficult it is to remain unfazed by others’ work after being in the industry for over 25 years. “What is the point of having become such a huge star, if you’re still going to follow someone else? Or be bothered by someone else, or think about someone else or compare yourself to someone else?” he asks. Shah Rukh says — “not out of pompousness or ego” — that he has everything going for him, which is why he doesn’t feel the need to look further than his mirror. “I’m sure I’m being presumptuous, but there are a lot of people out there who say ‘wish we become Shah Rukh Khan’. I am Shah Rukh Khan, so why should I want to be someone else?” SRK stressed in an interview that when he joined the industry, he was a “nobody”. “With no money, no house, no future, parents dead, I did what I felt like doing. I had nothing to lose. Now I have everything. One way to look at it is, ‘Oh I’ve so much to lose’. The other way is, ‘I’ve gained so much, even if I try to lose it, it won’t go away.’ If we were so brave when we had nothing, why should we not be equally brave in our beliefs and thoughts in what we want to do, when we have everything going for us?” he says. The superstar believes it is “silly” not to do what one wants, especially for someone like him who has achieved a certain status. “I do what I feel like doing. I made the most expensive film in the country ever, knowing fully well it won’t recover the money. But I had to do it,” he says. In the last two years, Shah Rukh has made some unconventional choices — from featuring in a double role in the psychological thriller Fan (2016) to doing an extended cameo in Dear Zindagi (2016), a film that predominantly belonged to actor Alia Bhatt. The actor says he is excited by the work of his contemporaries but eventually finds solace in what he wants to do. “My belief is, if someone else has already done it, why do you want to do it? Go for something else... I can't assimilate all and live my life. As an artist, actor, father, star, it has to be what I feel like in the morning,” he adds. SRK will be next seen as a vertically-challenged man in filmmaker Aanand L Rai’s untitled film.

PHOTO: RAAJESSH KASHYAP/HT

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