Shah Rukh Khan
Shah Rukh Khan, popularly known by the initials SRK, is an Indian actor and film producer renowned for his work in Hindi cinema. Referred to in the media as the "Baadshah of Bollywood" and "King Khan", he has appeared in more than 100 films and earned numerous accolades, including a National Film Award and 15 Filmfare Awards. He has been awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India, as well as the Order of Arts and Letters and Legion of Honour by the Government of France. Khan has a significant following in Asia and among the Indian diaspora worldwide. In terms of income, several media outlets have described him as one of the most successful film stars in the world.
Khan began his career with appearances in several television series in the late 1980s and made his Hindi film debut in 1992 with the musical romance Deewana. He was initially recognised for playing villainous roles in the films Baazigar and Darr. Khan established himself by starring in a series of top-grossing romantic films, including Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Mohabbatein, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Veer-Zaara, and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. He earned critical acclaim for his portrayal of an alcoholic in the period romantic drama Devdas, a NASA scientist in the social drama Swades, a hockey coach in the sports drama Chak De! India, and a man with Asperger syndrome in the drama My Name Is Khan. Further commercial successes came with the romances Om Shanti Om and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and with his expansion to comedies in Chennai Express and Happy New Year. Following a brief setback and hiatus, Khan made a career comeback with the 2023 action thrillers Pathaan and Jawan, both of which rank among the highest-grossing Indian films. For Jawan, he received the National Film Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
As of 2015, Khan is co-chairman of the motion picture production company Red Chillies Entertainment and its subsidiaries and is the co-owner of the Indian Premier League cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders and the Caribbean Premier League team Trinbago Knight Riders. He is a frequent television presenter and stage show performer. Khan's philanthropic endeavours have provided health care and disaster relief, and he was honoured with UNESCO's Pyramide con Marni award in 2011 for his support of children's education and the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award in 2018 for advocating for women's and children's rights in India. He regularly features in listings of the most influential people in Indian culture, and in 2008, Newsweek named him one of their fifty most powerful people in the world. In 2022, Khan was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time in a readers' poll by Empire, and in 2023, Time named him as one of the most influential people in the world.
Early life and family
Parents
Khan's father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, was an Indian independence activist from Peshawar who campaigned alongside the Khudai Khidmatgar, a nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan that sought a united and independent India. Mir was a follower of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and affiliated with the Indian National Congress. He was also the cousin of the major general in the Indian National Army Shah Nawaz Khan. According to Khan, his paternal grandfather, Mir Jan Muhammad Khan, was an ethnic Pashtun from Afghanistan. However, his paternal cousins in Peshawar later clarified that the family speaks Hindko, a language related to Punjabi that Khan can understand and speak even if not fluently, and is originally from Kashmir, from where they settled in Peshawar centuries back, thus contradicting the claim that his grandfather was a Pashtun from Afghanistan. As of 2010, Khan's paternal family was still living in the Shah Wali Qataal area of Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar.In 1946, Mir moved to Delhi to study law at Delhi University. With the partition of India in 1947, he was forced to stay in Delhi and did not return to Peshawar until many years later. Khan's mother, Lateef Fatima, a magistrate, was the daughter of a senior government engineer. His parents were married in 1959.
Early life
Khan was born as Shahrukh Khan on 2 November 1965 into a Muslim family in New Delhi. He spent the first five years of his life in Mangalore, where his maternal grandfather, Iftikhar Ahmed, served as chief engineer of the port in the 1960s. Khan has described himself on Twitter as "half Hyderabadi, half Pathan, and some Kashmiri ".Khan grew up in the Rajendra Nagar neighbourhood of New Delhi. His father had several business ventures including a restaurant, and the family lived a middle-class life in rented apartments. Khan attended St. Columba's School in central Delhi where he excelled in his studies and in sports such as hockey and football, and received the school's highest award, the Sword of Honour. Initially Khan aspired to pursue a career in sports, however a shoulder injury in his early years meant that he could no longer play. 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. One of his childhood friends and acting partners was Amrita Singh, who became a Bollywood actress. Khan enrolled at University of Delhi’s Hansraj College to earn his bachelor's degree in economics, but spent much of his time at Delhi's Theatre Action Group, where he studied acting under the mentorship of theatre director Barry John. After graduating from Hansraj, he cleared the entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Technology, as his mother insisted that he attempt an engineering exam. Khan then began studying for a master's degree in mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, but left to pursue his acting career. At Jamia, future filmmaker Kabir Khan was his junior, and he would use Shah Rukh’s notes for study. He also attended the National School of Drama in Delhi during his early career in Bollywood.
His father died of cancer in 1981, and his mother died in 1991 from complications of diabetes. After the death of their parents, his older sister, Shahnaz Lalarukh fell into a depressed state and Khan took on the responsibility of caring for her. Shahnaz continues to live with her brother and his family in their Mumbai mansion.
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. In the series, which depicted a realistic look at the training of army cadets, he played the leading role of Abhimanyu Rai. This led to further appearances in Aziz Mirza's television series Circus and Mani Kaul's miniseries Idiot. Khan also played minor parts in the serials Umeed and Wagle Ki Duniya, and in the English-language television film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones. His appearances in these serials led critics to compare his look and acting style with those of the film actor Dilip Kumar, but Khan was not interested in film acting at the time, thinking that he was not good enough.Khan changed his decision to act in films in April 1991, citing it as a way to escape the grief of his mother's death. He moved from Delhi to Mumbai to pursue a full-time career in Bollywood and was quickly signed to four films. His first offer was for Hema Malini's directorial debut Dil Aashna Hai, and by June, he had started his first shoot. His film debut was in Deewana, which was released in June 1992. In it he starred alongside Divya Bharti as the second male lead behind Rishi Kapoor. Deewana became a box office hit and launched Khan's Bollywood career; he earned the Filmfare Best Male Debut Award for his performance. Also released in 1992 were Khan's first films as the male lead, Chamatkar, Dil Aashna Hai, and the comedy Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, which was his first of many collaborations with the actress Juhi Chawla. His initial film roles saw him play characters who displayed energy and enthusiasm. According to Arnab Ray of Daily News and Analysis, Khan brought a new kind of acting as he was "sliding down stairs on a slab of ice, cartwheeling, somersaulting, lips trembling, eyes trembling, bringing to the screen the kind of physical energy... visceral, intense, maniacal one moment and cloyingly boyish the next."
1993–1994: Negative characters
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. The former, in which Khan played an ambiguous avenger who murders his girlfriend, shocked Indian audiences with an unexpected violation of the standard Bollywood formula. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, Sonal Khullar called the character "the consummate anti-hero". His performance in Baazigar, which would be his first of many appearances with actress Kajol, won Khan his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor. In 2003, the Encyclopaedia 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". 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. Malini Mannath of The Indian Express argued that he "walks away with the acting honours in yet another negative role". 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. 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. The ensuing controversy prompted him to eschew such scenes in future roles.In 1994, Khan played a love-struck musician in Kundan Shah's comedy-drama film Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa opposite Deepak Tijori and Suchitra Krishnamurthy, which he later professed was his favourite role. His performance earned him a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Performance, and in a retrospective review from 2004, Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com referred to it as Khan's best performance, calling him "spontaneous, vulnerable, boyish, mischievous and acting straight from the heart". Also in 1994, Khan won the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role for his role as an obsessive lover in Anjaam, co-starring Madhuri Dixit. At the time, playing antagonistic roles was considered risky to a leading man's career in mainstream Hindi cinema. Arnab Ray subsequently credited Khan for taking "insane risks" and "pushing the envelope" by choosing to play such characters, through which he established his career. The director Mukul S. Anand called him "the new face of the industry" at the time.