shahrukh khan biography in urdu

Shah Rukh Khan Height, Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Some lesser known facts about shah rukh khan.

• Shah Rukh Khan, also known as SRK, is an Indian actor and film producer who mostly works in Hindi films. He is also called the “Baadshah of Bollywood,” “King of Bollywood,” and “King Khan.” Shah Rukh, who has a lot of fans in Asia and around the world, is recognized as one of the most successful actors in Bollywood. He is also considered to be among the most popular actors worldwide.

Shah Rukh Khan’s Childhood Photo

Shah Rukh Khan’s Rajinder Nagar House in Delhi

Shah Rukh Khan’s Gautam Nagar House in Delhi

• During an interview, he told that his mother was a South Indian and belonged to Andhra Pradesh, who later moved to Karnataka.

I was adopted by my grandparents when my parents were working hard to make ends meet. So I spent the first five to six years of my life in Bengaluru. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {}; adpushup.que = adpushup.que || []; adpushup.que.push(function() { adpushup.triggerAd("15a5b0e2-2cba-4f1b-bc64-939559447f88"); }); A view of the house of Iftekhar Ahmed, the maternal grandfather of Shahrukh Khan, in Bengaluru

A File Photo of General Shah Nawaz Khan With Subhash Chandra Bose

• Shah Rukh’s parents had a love marriage. They met each other for the first time in a hospital, where his mother was injured and needed blood. At that time, his father donated blood to his mother. Their love started at that moment.
• He was just 15 years old when his father died due to cancer in 1981.

We were so young and then to take a decision to get married and to a person who is going to join films, and being from a different religion.”

Gauri also revealed that Shah Rukh once changed his name to Abhinav to make her parents believe that he was a Hindu. Gauri said,

We changed his name to Abhinav so they (her parents) feel he is a Hindu boy but that was really silly and very childish.”

• He was named Shahrukh, which means “Face of the King,” but he prefers to write his name as ‘Shah Rukh Khan.’
• Shah Rukh Khan has an immense love for video games.
• He was a sportsman in his school days. Once, while he was playing football in the Dr. Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi, he kicked a ball during a penalty and tore up his entire right side muscle. He was then, on bed rest for a month and his sports career came to an end.
• Apart from being good at sports like football, hockey, and cricket, Shah Rukh was also fond of the many popular Indian street games like flying the kites and playing Gilli-Danda and Kancha (Marbles).

Shah Rukh Khan Playing Cricket In His Younger Days

Shah Rukh Khan Received Sword Of Honour

• During an interview, he shared that he doesn’t take shower on Sundays.

Shah Rukh Khan’s C Gang

• In his youth, he used to mimic legendary Bollywood actors like Dilip Kumar , Amitabh Bachchan , Mumtaz, etc.

Shah Rukh Khan Performing in a Play During His College Days

Shah Rukh Khan With Barry John

I wasn’t a part of the National School of Drama, but I used to work with a lot of actors who were from there. Manoj (Bajpayee) wasn’t from there either, but he and I worked with actors like Raghuvir Yadav and others who were a part of NSD. They used to help with our syntax and enunciation when we were doing theatre in Delhi. I learnt a lot from them. My father used to run the canteen at NSD, which is how I got to know all the amazing actors from there.”

• His first salary was ₹50, which he earned by working as an escort at  Pankaj Udhas ‘s concert in Delhi. Once, he even tried to expand a small restaurant in Dariya Ganj, but it didn’t work.
• After receiving his first salary, Shah Rukh took the train to Agra and visited the Taj Mahal.

Shah Rukh Khan With Vivek Vaswani

• He was first offered a role in Lekh Tandon’s television show “Dil Dariya,” but there were continuous delays in the broadcasting of the show, which led his series “Fauji” to become his television debut.

I always wanted to join the Army, so I would have aimed for that had acting not happened.” Shah Rukh Khan During the shoot of the film, Fauji

Shah Rukh Khan in a still from In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (L), a young Arundhati Roy (R)

• After his mother’s demise in 1991, he shifted to Mumbai along with his sister.

Because I was not too happy about him coming to Bombay. I actually didn’t even know when he became a star. It was very shocking for me first to be here, and films and everything. It was very, very difficult. I actually didn’t want his films to do well. I thought if it flopped, I should go back to Delhi. Because when you are so young and I got married at 21. Films, how and what happens, everything was so new. For me it was like nothing should run and everything should be a flop.”

Dil Aashna Hai Poster

• Later, he featured in films like “Chamatkar,” “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman,” “Maya Memsaab,” “King Uncle,” “Baazigar,” and “Darr.” He even did a cameo in the Bollywood film “Pehla Nasha.”
• Although he doesn’t stammer in his real life, his dialogue “I love you K…k…k Kiran” from the film “Darr” became an evergreen hit.

Shah Rukh Khan In Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa

• He became a household name after the blockbuster film “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.”
• While shooting for the song “Chaiya Chaiya” from the film “Dil Se” on a moving train, Shah Rukh was the only person who was not tied to the train. All the other dancers were tied to the train for protection.

• Besides ruling the world of acting, he is also famous for his hosting skills, which have been justified in numerous award shows starting with the 48th Filmfare Awards and then in a row- 49th, 52nd, 53rd, 55th, 57th, 58th, 61st, 62nd, and 63rd Filmfare Awards. He has also hosted the 20th and 21st Life OK Screen Awards and the 6th, and 14th International Indian Film Academy Awards.

Shah Rukh Khan Hosting Kaun Banega Crorepati Season 3

Shah Rukh Khan hosting Kya Aap Paanchvi Paas Se Tez Hain?

• He has a fear of riding horses and hates eating ice-creams.

Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders

• He has also been the brand ambassador of various government campaigns like “Pulse Polio” and “National AIDS Control Organisation.” He was delegated by the UNOPS as the first global ambassador of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
• In 2012, SRK made his first on-screen kiss in the film “Jab Tak Hai Jaan.”
• In 2013, Shah Rukh Khan founded the Meer Foundation (NGO), which works to rehabilitate burn and acid attack survivors and empower women in India.

Shah Rukh Khan’s Book- King Khan: The Official Opus of Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan With His Son Abram

Shahrukh Khan’s Transformation In Fan

• In 2017, he came up with an Indian talk show- TED Talks India Nayi Soch produced by TED conferences.

Shah Rukh Khan Receiving Human Rights Awareness Award

Shah Rukh Khan With His Wax Statue At London’s Madame Tussaud’s Museum

• SRK has charmed people worldwide with his signature pose, i.e., spreading his arms wide open.
• In 2018, Aanand L. Rai came up with a movie titled “Zero,” featuring Shah Rukh Khan in the lead role. The film was also in the news for Sridevi ‘s last appearance in films.
• SRK has a great obsession with numerology and is very much superstitious about the number 555 as he believes it brings good luck for him. Moreover, most of his cars have registered number 555 and his personal e-mail ID also contains the same number.
• Despite believing in Islam, he equally values his wife’s religion and teaches his children too, to do the same. He once said that at his home, the Qur’an was situated next to the Hindu Gods.
• Shah Rukh Khan revealed in an interview that he was not a nature lover.
• In 2019, he made headlines for his appearance in a series of videos for Dubai Tourism’s #BeMyGuest campaign. In the video, he was seen alongside superheroes Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor as they joined hands to solve a riddle in Dubai.

View this post on Instagram Superpowers… Do I need them to find all the Dubai coins? Can I beat the odds this time? Watch the action unfold… #BeMyGuest @visit.dubai A post shared by Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) on Mar 21, 2019 at 12:27am PDT

• In October 2019, Shah Rukh Khan appeared on David Letterman’s talk show, which featured on Netflix.

• He is a night person and sleeps every day at around 5 in the morning.
• During a rapid-fire round of a chat show, he revealed that he was obsessed with computers.
• During the 2019 Diwali bash at Amitabh Bachchan ‘s house, Shah Rukh Khan saved Aishwarya Rai ‘s manager, Archana Sadanand, from fire. Archana was with her daughter in the courtyard when her lehenga caught fire. While everyone else got stunned by the incident, Shah Rukh rushed to her and put out the fire.
• In June 2022, he announced on Twitter that he had become the owner of a women’s cricket team named Trinbago Knight Riders under his Knight Riders cricket team franchise.

This is such a happy moment for all of us at @KKRiders @ADKRiders & of course the lovely set of people at @TKRiders Hope I can make it there to see this live!! https://t.co/IC9Gr96h92 — Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) June 17, 2022

• In July 2023, he was announced as the brand ambassador for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023. While launching the World Cup 2023 campaign, the ICC shared a video clip of the actor’s iconic voice on its official social media platforms.

Shah Rukh Khan consuming alcoholic beverages

References/Sources: [ + ]

Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan biography, biodata, wiki, age, date of birth, height, movies, affairs, wife, family, education, net worth, religion, caste & more

• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/shah-rukh-khan-gets-a-political-connection-cousin-noor-jehan-to-contest-elections-in-pakistan/articleshow/64508494.cms?from=mdr [ ↩ ]
• https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/storyboard/the-resurgence-of-brand-shah-rukh-khan/ [ ↩ ]
• https://www.tv9marathi.com/latest-news/bollywood-superstar-shahrukh-khan-driver-from-akola-mohan-dongare-dies-263431.html [ ↩ ]

Shah Rukh Khan

• Born November 2 , 1965 · New Delhi, India
• The Baadshah of Bollywood
• The Raja of Bollywood
• King of Romance
• Height 5′ 7½″ (1.72 m)
• Known for his trademark gelled spiked up crew cut with sunglasses, Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) is an Indian Bollywood movie star, movie producer, magazine model, showman, public speaker, author, philanthropist and television host/personality working predominantly in Hindi cinema. Khan began his on-camera acting debut in 1987 at the age of 21 by guest starring in various Indian serial drama soap opera TV shows as well as appearing in numerous television commercials and brand advertisements for products. He studied theatre arts and drama during his second year of college after participating in numerous school plays. He landed a few acting gigs in Delhi, before acting on Indian TV and became popular. Khan came down to Mumbai to shoot a TV series with self doubt and under confidence. So he came for a year to give it a shot. He began auditioning for starring roles in Hindi movies in 1990 after the death of his mother (his father died a decade earlier in 1980). Khan's parents died early, which made him heartbroken in Delhi. Khan decided to pursue a full-time acting career and relocating to Mumbai to start afresh, hoping to enjoy acting and overcome the dejecting death of his parents, as there was nothing for him to go back to. He began auditioning for starring roles in Hindi movies in 1990 after the death of his mother (his father died a decade earlier in 1980). After recuperating from a career-ending sports injury, he landed his breakout breakthrough feature film starring role in the Silver screen in June 1992, and rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 1990s. Khan shot to stardom in his first feature film "Deewana" (1992) which won him the first of 13 Filmfare awards -- the Bollywood equivalent of an Oscar. He continued starring in blockbuster movies throughout the 2000s with a mixed bag of career fluctuations, establishing himself as a very bankable, versatile movie star in the early-to-mid 2010s. Following a 4-year sabbatical hiatus in the wake of the corona-virus pandemic, Khan made a resurgence comeback in 2023, and continues to act and star in A-Lister blockbuster movies. Referred to in the media as the "Baadshah of Bollywood" and "King Khan", he has appeared in over 100 films, and earned numerous accolades, including 14 Filmfare Awards. He has been awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India, as well as the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Legion of Honour by the Government of France. Khan has a significant following in Asia and the Indian diaspora worldwide. In terms of audience size and income, several media outlets have described him as one of the most successful film stars in the world. Many of his films depict and portray Indian national identity, Indian patriotism, and connections with diaspora communities, or gender, racial, social and religious differences and grievances. Shah Rukh Khan has been TAG Heuer's brand ambassador in India since September 2003 & is close friends with Amir. He is Bollywood's most bankable movie stars with brand endorsements & resides in the affluent suburbs of Bandra, Mumbai, India with his wife and children. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous.
• Spouse Gauri Khan (October 25, 1991 - present) (3 children)
• Children Aryan Khan Suhana Khan AbRam Khan
• Parents Lateef Fatima Khan Meer Mohammed Taj Khan
• Relatives Shehnaz Lalarukh (Sibling)
• His Dimples
• His Signature Pose by slowly waving both hands in a rising upward motion
• Loves watching movies alone in the darkness of his BMW car.
• His parents died before he entered movies. Shahrukh considers it a big regret that they couldn't see what their son was to become.
• Loves computer games, video games and hi-tech gadgets.
• His first name "Shahrukh" means "face of the king".
• He has a dog called Chewbacca.
• Yes, I do have a close circle of friends and I am very fortunate to have them as friends. I feel very close to them I think friends are everything in life after your family. You come across lots of people all the time but you only make very few friends and you have to be true to them otherwise what's the point in life?
• I'd rather sink trying to be different, than stay afloat like everyone else.
• I cannot repay my fans for what they have done for me, they have given me so much love and that love has taken me to the number 1 position where I am today, the only thing I can do for my fans is to never stop working, and to do films till the very end, it is the only way I can express my love for them.
• To me, Devdas is the end of love stories. I've portrayed an obsessed lover, a nice lover, an angry lover, a romantic lover. And now I've played Devdas. For someone who doesn't even like love stories, I've played an awful lot of lovers. Personally speaking, I wouldn't see any of the romantic films I've acted in.
• I'm the luckiest man in the world and I don't want to hide from the faces I'm acting for. So I don't surround myself with guards, I've never given an interview in which I've said I feel bad that I can't go shopping or I can't go to Chowpatty and eat bhelpuri without being mobbed. I'm not the kind of guy who goes out wearing dark glasses (I don't think I'm a big enough star to hide behind them, honest). I go to see movies in the cinema theatres, I go to restaurants with my family and friends even though I know people are going to disturb me there.
• Dunki (2023) - ₹280,000,000
• Jawan (2023) - ₹1,000,000,000
• Raees (2017) - ₹200,000,000
• Asoka (2001) - ₹3,500,000
• Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) - ₹10,000,000

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• Inspiring Success Story Of Shah Rukh Khan From A Delhi Boy To The King Of Bollywood

Inspiring Success Story Of Shah Rukh Khan From A Delhi Boy To The King of Bollywood

From the streets of Delhi to becoming the King of Bollywood, take a look at Shah Rukh Khan’s inspiring journey.

Published On Feb 09, 2024 | Updated On Mar 04, 2024

The mere mention of Shah Rukh Khan's name brings an image of charisma, charm, and a heart-melting smile. He is arguably the most loved and popular Bollywood star who has received immense love from his fans over the years. Going by the nicknames of King Khan, Badshah, King of Bollywood, King of Romance, Khan Saab, and SRK, Shah Rukh Khan is an actor of calibre and a man of integrity. However, this celebrated actor of today didn't always have a smooth life. His success is a result of consistency, commitment, grit, determination, and an unwavering belief in his dreams. If you're interested in knowing about the biography of Shah Rukh Khan, here's a nuanced look into his early life, Bollywood debut, and everything else that makes him who he is.  Take a look at Shah Rukh Khan's inspiring biography

Early life of SRK

Son of the independence activist Meer Taj Mohammad Khan and Lateef Fatima, Shah Rukh Khan was born on 2nd November 1965. Shah Rukh Khan's biography tells us that he is half-Hyderabadi and half-Pathan. He spent his childhood in Delhi and completed his schooling at Columba’s School, where he was awarded the Sword of Honour award in recognition of his excellent performance in academics, sports, and co-curricular activities. Shah Rukh Khan's journey then took him to Hansraj College, Delhi, to pursue a degree in Economics. However, owing to his inclination towards acting since childhood (with Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan as his favourites), Shah Rukh spent most of his time at acting gigs with the Delhi Theatre Action group. Eventually, he went to the National School of Drama.

Struggles in his life 

Shah Rukh Khan's stardom and glittery life that we all admire hasn't always been with him. Shah Rukh Khan's journey is full of hardships, and the most significant of these is perhaps losing his mother at a young age. Being born in a middle-class family in Delhi, Shah Rukh saw a lot of hardships on a financial level as well.  However, he was never one to succumb to adversities. Shah Rukh Khan's biography is so inspiring because it constantly shows us his efforts at creating a better life. After his mother's demise, Shah Rukh found solace in storytelling and theatre. He was a natural, and his talent gradually paved the path to his massive success. Soon, he moved to Mumbai with eyes full of drama and a small bag of belongings. Many rejections and underestimating roles later, a star was born that now has an international fandom. 

SRK's acting debut and trajectory 

Shah Rukh Khan’s age was 23 years old when he got his first acting gig for the TV series Dil Dariya in 1988. This was followed by his roles in other soap operas like Fauji (1989) and Circus (1989). The journey of Shah Rukh Khan to become a successful hero then saw him take up roles in mini-series, telefilms, and soap operas like Wagle ki Duniya and Umeed . His phenomenal acting skills soon caught the eye of industry seniors who saw his resemblance with Dilip Kumar.

In 1992, Shah Rukh Khan landed his Bollywood debut with Deewana and then Dilip Ashna Hai . His exceptional performance in these also got him the Best Debut award. Gradually, Shah Rukh was featured in commercial movies like Chamatkar and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman .  In 1993, Shah Rukh Khan opted for two negative roles - Baazigar and Darr . Though people were sceptical initially, once again, with his great calibre even in a negative role, Shah Rukh won hearts and gave two box office hits. 

SRK's blockbuster era 

Having created a mark for himself over the years of struggle and then his marvellous debut, Shah Rukh Khan then had his blockbuster era. The journey of Shah Rukh Khan is well marked in history with his acclaimed performance in movies like Anjaam and K abhi Haan Kabhi Naa , which also fetched him the Best Actor Awards.  The years after this saw him hitting us after hits with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge , Yes Boss, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai , Pardes , Dil Toh Pagal Hai , etc. During this time, Shah Rukh Khan and Yash Chopra were regarded as a powerful duo who created commercially successful hits. 

Rough patches in SRK's career 

With the glorious success, Shah Rukh Khan also had to endure a few rough patches. During the 2000s, he delivered some beautiful performances which were unfortunately unable to perform as expected at the box office.  During this phase, King Khan was dealing with major health issues, and he also had a lot of workload on him. Some of the movies he did during this phase include Duplicate , Asoka , Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani , Badshah , etc. The biography of Shah Rukh Khan should also list his production house Dreamz Unlimited, which was started with high hopes but could yield no significant results. 

Creating a legacy 

Shah Rukh Khan is a celebrated Indian hero whose home entrance gets crowded by hundreds of people on his birthday every year. People wait in anticipation to get just one glance at the superstar and the humble person that he is, Shah Rukh comes to the balcony and waves at his beloved fans. Despite the rough patches in his career, King Khan managed to work on big banner projects with ensemble casts. These include titles like Devdas , Kal Ho Na Ho , Mohabbatein , Chalte Chalte , and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham . Eventually, he stepped into the world of production again, this time with his wife, Gauri Khan, and together they recreated Dreamz Unlimited into Red Chillies Entertainment Limited. Under this banner, Shah Rukh delivered popular movies like Main Hoon Naa and Veer Zara . His movie Swades is often called the best movie of his career. Swades was a widely loved film that also happens to be the first Indian movie to be shot on the NASA campus. Then came hits like Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna , Paheli , Chak De India , Don , Om Shanti Om , and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi .   His box office hits during recent years include Don 2 , Happy New Year , Chennai Express , My Name is Khan , Dilwale, Jab Tak Hai Jaan , etc. Last year, Shahr Rukh made a comeback after four years and gave us sensational like Pathaan and Jawan which were major box office hits. At the age of 58, Shah Rukh Khan is one of the fittest and best-looking people in the entertainment industry. He has beautifully maintained his image of a respectful, consistent, and humble actor who has never been a part of random scams or controversies. A man of true character and integrity, Shah Rukh Khan's journey is noteworthy and deserves to be applauded!

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The Thoroughly Goofy, Undeniably Seductive, All-in-One Charm of Shah Rukh Khan

My favorite sequence in the 2007 Bollywood movie Om Shanti Om , a minor postmodern masterpiece from director Farah Khan, comes early in its nearly three-hour run time. It’s a song-and-dance number, and I’m hardly alone in my fondness for it. “ Dhoom Taana ” — which penetrated a wider consciousness in 2014, when the Indian American woman who would go on to win that year’s Miss America contest performed her version during the talent section — is a proper banger; its popularity is one reason the film set box-office records: melodically and lyrically catchy and mischievous; visually striking, with its stitched-together collage of old films; and, as a dance number, exuberant and elegantly athletic. But what makes this cheeky, pastiched homage to Bollywood most alluring is the particular way the sequence subverts gender roles, inside the film’s larger parodic enterprise. Perhaps it makes sense that the figure on whose efforts this delicate exercise largely rests is the megawatt actor Shah Rukh Khan, maybe the only Indian superstar suited for the task.

What is it about SRK? He is at once the biggest and most versatile of Bollywood heroes, a star said to command a larger fan following than any other working actor in the world today , a man who does psychological thriller, screwball comedy, earnest romance, ditzy rom-com, serious biopic, and, lately, testosterone-fueled action. He’s said to be five-feet-seven, shorter than some of his female co-stars, seemingly still in full possession of his springy hair, and is physically muscular yet lithe, with a dancer’s grace, as if Gene Kelly had dabbled in steroids. Other heartthrobs of his generation and stature — Salman Khan with his rigid musculature; Aamir Khan, chilly and slightly cerebral; Akshay Kumar with his square frat-boy face — can seem as inflexible as plastic superheroes in Mattel boxes. But SRK is chameleonic, sensual, even as he stays unerringly poised and polite in interviews and on social media, as if he signed a contract for statesmanlike celebrityhood in blood. At 57, he still conveys a whiff of the unconflicted naïveté of 1990s Bollywood superstardom, when gold was an absolute good and fame an incontrovertible blessing. One nickname, “Brand SRK,” feels all too fitting, if unwittingly so, for a populist golden goose willing to lend his image, name, and endorsement even to products as unsexy as ballpoint pens and air conditioners. “Tide,” he is pronouncing at this very moment in some household on the subcontinent, “is the real SRK,” meaning the “stain removal king.” Yet a funny aliveness inevitably roughs up all his performances, a suggestion that he is highly sensitive to the bizarre pageantry of his life and of the industry.

Nowhere is this self-awareness more evident than in Om Shanti Om . The film, often called a love letter to Bollywood, skewers the industry’s foibles (among them nepotism and melodrama) with precision. It’s an homage in every sense, including in how it requires of its performers that they operate in all of Bollywood’s high keys — comedy, drama, action — convincingly, within a single movie. In the palimpsest of “Dhoom Taana,” which inserts the movie’s stars — Khan and, notably, Deepika Padukone, a superstar in her own right today, here in her debut role — into vintage Bollywood footage, the film’s playful skewering reaches a zenith.

Padukone plays Shanti Priya, an “It”-girl actress in 1970s Bollywood — loosely inspired by the legendary beauty Hema Malini — for whom Khan’s character, a struggling actor from the tenements named Om Kapoor, nurses a one-sided infatuation. In an early scene, he’s in the cheap seats at the premiere of her movie. When the curtains open, a film inside our film starts: The item number “Dhoom Taana” reveals Padukone as Shanti Priya, superimposed into the fuzzy romance of the palace in the 1966 period film Amrapali . The editing trick isn’t part of the fiction of Om Shanti Om , of course, but we outside viewers are in on the diegesis. Against the muted colors of the remastered film, Padukone as Shanti Priya shines with a hyperalive splendor. (Padukone, daughter of the badminton champion Prakash Padukone, conveys that rare mix of sport and glamour, health and excess, that makes, say, Charlize Theron, powerfully alive onscreen.) Dressed in a tangerine-colored dance sari, her midriff and arms bare, she brushes against a remastered Sunil Dutt, playing a stoic BCE emperor, shirtless and mustachioed, serene and slightly ghostly, his epicene 1970s torso a surprise.

The serenade is interrupted by Om Kapoor’s daydreaming. Suddenly, we are in his fantasy — it’s he who is the hero. Shah Rukh Khan’s body, not Dutt’s, captures our attention, as vibrant as Padukone’s in the flickering palace, 2000s muscled rather than 1970s undefined, and desperate for the woman rather than the other way around. We’ve watched SRK play the dashing fool before — after making an entrance with villainous, creepy roles, he shot to global fame in the late 1990s, baring his heart, and occasionally his chest, to audiences in India and across the diaspora in a series of rom-coms (and the most picturesque of rom-drams, Dil Se ). With Om Shanti Om, he pulls off an uncanny complexity.

“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine,” Susan Sontag wrote in her classic text Notes on Camp, in which she calls androgyny a hallmark of camp sensibility . And Khan, as the naïvely ambitious, lovesick Kapoor, telegraphs as somehow half-man and half-woman, half-empowered and half-doomed, a perfect ambassador for the campiest of film industries. (Let’s presume Sontag hadn’t seen a Bollywood movie, already flamboyant in her time, or else how to explain the genre’s exclusion from her piercing eye?) He waggles his eyebrows, bounces goofily on beat, his heart set on a woman who will never be his, in a world he will never conquer. His movements are slightly too much, desperate.

But that vulnerability is laced with a cool self-assurance. He seduces as he pleads. Is it Om Kapoor we see? Or Shah Rukh Khan in his greatest performance yet? The superstar, pretending to be the opposite? Padukone, a newcomer playing a star, next to a real one playing a nobody, participates in this inversion: Is she the hero, or is he? Is she in control, or is he? When, midway through the movie, Om Kapoor dashes into a fire that’s broken out on set to rescue Shanti Priya — another reference to a deep cut of Bollywood lore (the story of how the actress Nargis fell in love with none other than Sunil Dutt after a similar rescue) — his movements again throw inversions into relief. She is the VIP on set; he is the peon … or? He carries her out of the flames, stumbling slightly, but a new strength in his gait competes with the obsequiousness. His face flickers with a mix of disbelief and certitude; her eyes are on him. For a moment, as in the best romances, whatever is between them seems larger than the structures that hold them, pure, unvarnished.

Like so many figures who capture mass attention, Shah Rukh Khan can seem to have been born to throw matters of identity into question. The son of a Pathan father from Afghanistan and a Hyderabadi mother, he grew up in Delhi, a middle-class boy who attended a prestigious local private school. That history helps explain his appeal, or so argued a pair of born-and-bred Mumbaikers to me recently: He’s the rare outsider to become Bollywood’s consummate insider, a carefully educated convent-school boy in a sea of unworldly nepo babies who know nothing else. This pedigree is also why, they suggested, he’s kept a relatively sterling reputation, free of the rumors of ultrasleazy or violent behavior that attend some peers. In college, Khan began to study acting and left a master’s degree in communications early to pursue an acting career. In his mid-20s, before he was a household name, he married Gauri Chhibber, a hometown sweetheart, a Delhi girl known to him since he was 18 and she was 14, according to an interview he gave in the 2005 BBC documentary The Inner Life of Shah Rukh Khan . They settled in Bombay, the city where his second life began; his parents had both died in their mid-50s. Khan is Muslim, his wife Hindu.

Om Shanti Om , in line with its mandate to parody, revolves around a reincarnation plot, one of those Bollywoodian devices that draws mockery and analysis. “Hindi film,” the novelist Amit Chaudhuri argued wryly in The Guardian in 2006 , using an early term for the country’s mainstream cinema (hinged on the defining aspect of language), “is not an innocent genre,” unlike the films of Hollywood. Where the Western trope of the hero’s journey would have you believe that a person’s fate rests in their hands, Chaudhuri argues, Bollywood machinery pulls from a more ancient belief system, one aware that we have no control over our fates: “This doesn’t mean Hindi cinema is fatalistic — its exuberance is indispensable to its conviction that life is an unrecognizable rather than categorizable thing.” Offscreen, it’s time that forces us to realize the fact of this cruel grandeur, our puniness in the face of life’s whims, but “Bollywood reveals it to its audience [through] a series of devices: For example, coincidences, doubles, brothers separated at birth. These devices make the Hindi film embarrassing but also, at its best, very moving.” Om Shanti Om features several of these: Coincidences abound, but most strikingly, our two main characters disappear partway through the film and are reborn, now in reversed roles. Doubles, check. Rebirth, that supremely Hindu narrative device, check. Khan plays both a wannabe and, eventually, a superstar. He ends the movie, one could say, as himself. Padukone is now the upstart. All is right, in a sense, or at least, all is possible. Khan’s 360-degree abilities help make it so.

But if Hinduism is intrinsic to the Bollywood machinery, so, of course, is Khan — and the country’s many Muslim superstars and invisible artisans, past and present: a signifier of the essential pluralism beneath the country’s majoritarianism. Khan is unique in how he transmits this complexity. Before Om Shanti Om , there was Main Hoon Na , also with director Farah Khan, her first feature and their first partnership. That movie explicitly dealt with religious strife, with its buoyant envisioning of Indo-Pak relations. But in the cocoon of Om Shanti Om ’s Bollywood, subversions are subtler. In one early scene, as the lovelorn Om Kapoor, Khan wears a flashy golden necklace, its bulky pendant etched against the triangle of skin exposed by a casually unbuttoned shirt. At first glance, the gaudy bauble looks cheap, set against Khan’s floppy-haired boyishness, a prop for an infantilized member of a boy band. In fact, it’s a marker of his canniness and intensity as an Indian public figure. The pendant is made of three symbols, suggestive of the country’s most populous religious groups: an Om symbol, a crescent with star, and a cross, commingling as they sometimes do on the backs of auto rickshaws and on the walls of shops. The pendant leaps from the screen, a betrayal, perhaps, of Khan’s, more than his character’s, preoccupations; like any smart service worker, he lets us know everyone is welcome to buy what he’s selling.

Or maybe that’s too crass an interpretation. In The Inner Life of Shah Rukh Khan, we see him on his off-hours, the politesse slightly loosened. He presents as an uninhibited, bone-deep Indian pluralist, if slightly limited in his embrace, to the largest of the country’s faiths. He organizes a Lakshmi puja with studio employees, eager for the fortune promised by the Hindu goddess of wealth. A later scene shows him at home with his wife and kids at an altar set up for Diwali. “Children should know about the value of God, whether it’s a Hindu God or a Muslim God,” he says, adding that a copy of the Quran sits beside icons of Ganesha and Lakshmi, and that he folds his hands in a namaskar position when his son says the Hindu prayer, the Gayatri Mantra, while elsewhere in the house, he might chant the Muslim invocation, Bismillah . “I’m not a great follower of religion,” he continues. “I believe in Allah very strongly, but I’ve never been forced by my parents to read the namaz five times a day.” In the Khan household, we learn, Eid, Diwali, and Christmas are all celebrated.

In the years since, he has continued his dizzying productivity, even as he’s ridden constant waves of disappearances and comebacks. He’s played antiheroes and darlings, dozens of Hindu characters but also, with time, Muslim ones, perhaps most famously, Rizwan Khan, in the 2010 film My Name Is Khan . That film, about a Muslim man with autism married to a Hindu woman, immigrants in America who respond to the hostile Islamophobia of the post-9/11 landscape by trying to meet the president, threw Khan into the path of India’s Hindu far right, namely the Shiv Sena Party, which demanded protests and boycotts of the movie after he spoke out against the passing over of members of Pakistan’s cricket team by the Indian Premier League. If he was stealthily Muslim before, he was no longer — his complexity as an Indian superstar extended on- and offscreen.

Last year’s release of Pathaan , a second blockbuster action movie, after Jawan , reunited Khan and Padukone (and stars John Abraham, who is Christian by birth) and again stoked ire. Members of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party called for a boycott and burned posters in the streets, their censure directed at the song-and-dance number “Besharam Rang,” or “Shameless Color.” Once more, Padukone and Khan only have eyes for each other. Only now we are in a fantasy so calculated there’s nothing fantastical about it: a seaside boardwalk in Spain, Padukone smoldering in swimwear. Business as usual for Bollywood. Khan appears in his latest incarnation — grizzled with a goatee, an elder statesman returned to the screen.

The notorious bit arrives at the end. Padukone wears a bikini in a shade likened by critics to the orange robes of Hindu ascetics as she writhes, an insult to Hinduism, argued the affronted. An offshoot theory cast Khan’s body under direct suspicion: His six-pack, naysayers insist (more sharply defined than ever), can’t possibly be real. Of course, it seems likely that it’s Khan’s onscreen embodiment of a national hero — he plays a Muslim character who is a gifted employee of the Indian intelligence agency RAW — that is the fiction under attack by the emboldened Hindu right of today. His own claims to Indian identity, as an “out” Muslim star, as well. Padukone’s tangerine sari of Dhoom Tana against his Om Kapoor never inspired rebuke. But Khan is ever capable, a man of his craft, a man of his country, and a man for many moments. On the press tour, in a mix of Hindi and English, he delivered a riposte that was also a reminder, as fetching as the reminiscences of Om Shanti Om : Deepika is Amar, I’m Akbar, John is Anthony. Not an obtuse reference, but a keen one, to the 1977 Bollywood film Amar Akbar Anthony , about three Indian brothers separated at birth and raised in different religious communities. A sleeker invocation, you could say, than the bulky pendant, and similarly, one only Khan, the chameleon, could pull off quite so winningly.

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Shah Rukh Khan (Q9535)

• Shahrukh Khan
• King of Bollywood
• Shahrukh Meer Taj Mohamed Khan
• King of romance

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