Shah Rukh Khan (pronounced [ˈʃaːɦrʊx xaːn]; born 2 November 1965), also known by the initialism SRK, is an Indian actor, film producer, and television personality. Referred to in the media as the "Baadshah of Bollywood" (in reference to his 1999 film Baadshah), "King of Bollywood" and "King Khan", he has appeared in more than 80 Hindi films, and earned numerous accolades, including 14 Filmfare Awards. The Government of India has awarded him the Padma Shri, and the Government of France has awarded him the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Legion of Honour. Khan has a significant following in Asia and the Indian diaspora worldwide. In terms of audience size and income, he has been described as one of the most successful film stars in the world.[a]
Khan began his career with appearances in several television series in the late 1980s. He made his Bollywood debut in 1992 with Deewana. Early in his career, Khan was recognised for portraying villainous roles in the films Baazigar (1993), Darr (1993), and Anjaam (1994). He then rose to prominence after starring in a series of romantic films, including Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Mohabbatein (2000) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001). Khan went on to earn critical acclaim for his portrayal of an alcoholic in Devdas (2002), a NASA scientist in Swades (2004), a hockey coach in Chak De! India (2007) and a man with Asperger syndrome in My Name Is Khan (2010). His highest-grossing films include the comedies Chennai Express (2013), Happy New Year (2014), Dilwale (2015), and the crime film Raees (2017). Many of his films display themes of Indian national identity and connections with diaspora communities, or gender, racial, social and religious differences and grievances.
Early life and family
Khan was born on 2 November 1965 into a Muslim family in New Delhi.[7] He spent the first five years of his life in Mangalore, where his maternal grandfather, Ifthikar Ahmed, served as the chief engineer of the port in the 1960s.[8][9][b] According to Khan his paternal grandfather, Meer Jan Muhammad Khan, was an ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) from Afghanistan.[11][12][13] Khan's father, Meer Taj Mohammed Khan, was an Indian independence activist from Peshawar who campaigned alongside the Khudai Khidmatgar, a Pashtun nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also known as Badshah Khan or the "Frontier Gandhi") that advocated for the creation of a united and independent India.[14] Meer was a follower of Abdul Ghaffar Khan,[15] and affiliated with the Indian National Congress.[12] As of 2010, Khan's paternal family was still living in the Shah Wali Qataal area of Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar.[12] They speak Hindko and claim to be originally from Kashmir.[12][16] Meer moved to New Delhi in 1948 after the partition of India.[17] Khan's mother, Lateef Fatima, was the daughter of a senior government engineer.[18][c] His parents were married in 1959.[21] Khan described himself on Twitter as "half Hyderabadi (mother), half Pathan (father), and some Kashmiri (paternal grandmother)".[22]
Khan grew up in the Rajendra Nagar neighbourhood of New Delhi.[23] His father had several business ventures including a restaurant, and the family lived a middle-class life in rented apartments.[24] Khan attended St. Columba's School in central Delhi where he excelled in his studies and in sports such as hockey and football,[25] and received the school's highest award, the Sword of Honour.[24] Initially Khan aspired to pursue a career in sports, however owing to a shoulder injury in his early years meant that he could no longer play.[26] Instead, in his youth, he acted in stage plays and received praise for his imitations of Bollywood actors, of which his favourites were Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, and Mumtaz.[27] One of his childhood friends and acting partners was Amrita Singh, who became a Bollywood actress.[28] Khan enrolled at Hansraj College (1985–88) to earn his bachelor's degree in economics, but spent much of his time at Delhi's Theatre Action Group (TAG),[29] where he studied acting under the mentorship of theatre director Barry John.[30] After Hansraj, he began studying for a master's degree in mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, but left to pursue his acting career.[31] He also attended the National School of Drama in Delhi during his early career in Bollywood.[32] His father died of cancer in 1981,[d] and his mother died in 1991 from complications of diabetes.[35] After the death of their parents, his older sister, Shahnaz Lalarukh (born 1960)[36] fell into a depressed state and Khan took on the responsibility of caring for her.[33][37] Shahnaz continues to live with her brother and his family in their Mumbai mansion.[38]
Acting Career
1988–1992: Television and film debut
Khan's first starring role was in Lekh Tandon's television series Dil Dariya, which began shooting in 1988, but production delays led to the Raj Kumar Kapoor directed 1989 series Fauji becoming his television debut instead.[52] In the series, which depicted a realistic look at the training of army cadets, he played the leading role of Abhimanyu Rai.[53][54] This led to further appearances in Aziz Mirza's television series Circus (1989–90) and Mani Kaul's miniseries Idiot (1991).[55] Khan also played minor parts in the serials Umeed (1989) and Wagle Ki Duniya (1988–90),[55] and in the English-language television film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989).[56] His appearances in these serials led critics to compare his look and acting style with those of the film actor Dilip Kumar,[57] but Khan was not interested in film acting at the time, thinking that he was not good enough.[55][58]
1993–1994: Anti-hero
Among his 1993 releases, Khan garnered the most appreciation for portraying villainous roles in two box office hits: a murderer in Baazigar, and an obsessive lover in Darr.[67] Baazigar, in which Khan played an ambiguous avenger who murders his girlfriend, shocked Indian audiences with an unexpected violation of the standard Bollywood formula.[68] In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, Sonal Khullar called the character "the consummate anti-hero".[69] His performance in Baazigar, which would be his first of many appearances with actress Kajol, won Khan his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor.[70] In 2003, the Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema stated that Khan "defied the image of the conventional hero in both these films and created his own version of the revisionist hero".[70] Darr marked the first of Khan's many collaborations with filmmaker Yash Chopra and his company Yash Raj Films. Khan's stammering and the use of the phrase "I love you, K-k-k-Kiran" were popular with audiences.[71] Malini Mannath of The Indian Express argued that he "walks away with the acting honours in yet another negative role".[72] For Darr he received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role, also known as the Best Villain Award, but lost to Paresh Rawal for Sir.[73] Also in 1993, Khan performed a nude scene with Deepa Sahi in Maya Memsaab, although parts of it were censored by the Central Board of Film Certification.[74] The ensuing controversy prompted him to eschew such scenes in future roles.[75]
1995–1998: Romantic roles
Khan starred in seven films in 1995, the first of which was Rakesh Roshan's melodramatic thriller Karan Arjun. Co-starring Salman Khan and Kajol, it became the second-highest-grossing film of the year in India.[77] His most significant release that year was Aditya Chopra's directorial debut, the romance Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, in which he played a young Non-resident Indian (NRI) who falls in love with Kajol's character during a trip across Europe. Khan was initially reticent to portray the role of a lover, but this film is credited with establishing him as a "romantic hero".[78] Lauded by both critics and the public, it became the year's highest grossing production in India and abroad and was declared an "all time blockbuster" by Box Office India,[77][79] with a gross of over ₹1.22 billion (US$17 million) worldwide.[80] It is the longest-running film in the history of Indian cinema; it is still showing at the Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai after more than 1000 weeks as of early 2015.[81][82] The film won ten Filmfare Awards, including the second of Khan's Best Actor Awards.[70] The director and critic Raja Sen said, "Khan gives a fabulous performance, redefining the lover for the 1990s with great panache. He's cool and flippant, but sincere enough to appeal to the [audience]. The performance itself is, like the best in the business, played well enough to come across as effortless, as non-acting."[83]
In 1996, all four of Khan's releases failed critically and commercially,[84] but the following year, his starring role opposite Aditya Pancholi and Juhi Chawla in Aziz Mirza's romantic comedy Yes Boss earned him accolades that included a Filmfare Best Actor nomination.[73] Later in 1997, he starred in Subhash Ghai's diasporic-themed social drama Pardes,[85] portraying Arjun, a musician facing a moral dilemma. India Today cites it as one of the first major Bollywood pictures to succeed in the United States.[86] Khan's final release of 1997 was a second collaboration with Yash Chopra in the popular musical romance Dil To Pagal Hai. He portrayed Rahul, a stage director caught in a love triangle between Madhuri Dixit and Karisma Kapoor. The film and his performance met with critical praise, winning Khan his third Best Actor Award at Filmfare.[70]
2015–present: Career fluctuations
Khan next appeared alongside Kajol, Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon in Rohit Shetty's action comedy Dilwale (2015). The film garnered mixed reviews, though it was financially profitable with a gross of ₹3.7 billion (US$52 million).[189] Namrata Joshi of The Hindu commented, "With Dilwale, Rohit Shetty goes hopelessly wrong despite much that he had at his disposal, including a power-packed cast and producer". Joshi also felt that the attempt to repackage Khan and Kajol had backfired.[190] He then took on dual parts of a superstar and his doppelgänger fan in Maneesh Sharma's action thriller Fan (2016). Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian considered the film to be "exhausting, bizarre yet watchable" and thought that Khan was aptly "creepy" as the obsessive admirer.[191] The film underperformed at the box office, and trade journalists attributed this failure to the film's non-conformity to mainstream formula.[192] Later that year, Khan portrayed the supporting part of a therapist to an aspiring cinematographer (played by Alia Bhatt) in Gauri Shinde's coming-of-age film Dear Zindagi.[193]
In Rahul Dholakia's action crime film Raees (2017), Khan took on the part of the titular anti-hero—a bootlegger turned mobster in 1980s Gujarat. In a typical mixed review, Pratim D. Gupta of The Telegraph thought Khan's performance to be "inconsistent, intense and power-packed at times, but often slipping out of character into his usual mix of stock mannerisms".[194] Commercially, the film was a modest success, earning about ₹3.08 billion (US$43 million) worldwide.[195][196] Khan returned to the romantic genre with the role of a tourist guide who falls in love with a traveller (played by Anushka Sharma) in Imtiaz Ali's Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017). Writing for Mint, Uday Bhatia criticised Khan's pairing with Sharma, 22 years his junior, writing that Khan had performed "similar gestures of love decades ago to actors his own age".[197] The film proved to be a box office flop.[198] Khan next reunited with Sharma and Katrina Kaif in Aanand L Rai's romantic drama Zero (2018), in which he played Bauua Singh, a dwarf involved in a love triangle.[199][200] The film received mixed reviews with praise directed to Khan's performance.[201][202] Writing for Hindustan Times, Raja Sen commended his "dominating performance and tremendous energy" and Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost called him an "excellent fit" for the role for allowing his "naturally energetic personality, comic timing and charm to take flight".[203][204] Commercially, it failed to do well.[205] According to a Box Office India report, Khan's stardom was impacted by his films failing to do well.[206]