Shah Rukh Khan: I get fewer choices due to my superstar status

Shah Rukh Khan on Wednesday, launched a biography of him written by journalist turned filmmaker turned author Samar Khan. The book is titled ‘SRK 25 Years Of A Life’. Talking at the launch, SRK said, “An actor is just like water… he should just adapt the colour and shape. I believe the art is important, the artist is not. The art remains and not the artist.”

However, the superstar too has certain regrets in his life, which were implied in his words. He said, “Stardom hasn’t restricted me but it is sometimes awkward to say that being in this position, the choices are fewer. I sit with different directors and they say, ‘We will make a big film!’ so, even before I start working, the film becomes big and I say, ‘Let’s just make a film!’ and it goes out of hands sometimes and everybody wants the film to be big.”

SRK is a director’s actor and gets pissed off whenever he hears other actors refusing to recite a particular dialogue. The star’s words also revealed that his late mother was a big inspiration in his life. The 51-year-old actor expressed, “There are two things– belief in the filmmaker because film is a director’s medium, we see the movie through his eyes and the second part is the belief in yourself that whatever the director gives me, I will do it to the best of my abilities…I find it very wrong when actors turn around and say, ‘My character won’t say these lines.’ That’s your character, you are the maker of it. I can do anything. If my director asks me to do a somersault during an emotional scene, I will do that. I will make it believable because I am an actor…My mother was a very social person and whosoever she met, she used to be like him or her. She would talk to a worker like a worker and an army officer in his way. That’s how actors should be. Whosoever they sit with, they should become like them.”

The much-awaited biography deals mainly with the actor’s 25 years of journey in Bollywood. Every chapter of the book has the director opening up on the character played by SRK in his film. Shah Rukh has penned the foreword in the book. The actor has opened his heart out on how he started his journey in Bollywood, his choice of roles, how the characters essayed by him, impacted his life and more. Excerpts:

“After all these years, sometimes I’m not sure whether I gave form and shape to the characters I played or whether they unwittingly give me more facets than there ever had existed.

Whether it was a Rahul, Raj, Mohan or Aryan; each of them took a piece of me and departed, leaving behind a little of themselves. Call it destiny or sheer fluke; they were characters that others didn’t take up and that eventually found their way to me.

They chose me, and as I walked in their shoes and traversed their paths, these characters gave my life a direction that I wasn’t in complete control of. Now, too, these characters continue to propel me forward with a force so surreal that I can hardly believe this is anything but a fantastic dream.

To have completed 25 years in this industry is a big dream for a boy who came from Delhi 29 years ago; a dream that worked only because directors dreamt it with me with an undying passion. It takes uncompromising masters to make a dream come alive. And each time a character I have played has worked his charm into the pages of cinematic history. It has never been just me breathing life into them, but also great storytellers fuelling them with an intensity that has stood the test of time. The directors who thought me worthy enough to breathe life into the character they wrote and imagined.

What piqued my interest about this effort especially was that it wasn’t me giving an interview about my own life; it was the revisiting of my story through the lens of my directors.

On a warm summer’s afternoon, this book is a spirited reminder of the blessings I have received in the form of these fascinating characters. If you read closely, they tell a great deal of my own life as Shah Rukh Khan.”