Maybe I am doing bad things

Excerpts from Anupama Chopra’s interactions with Shah Rukh Khan from her latest book

Freeze Frame

Author: Anupama Chopra

Publisher: Om, Rs 395

When they asked Spanish actor Javier Bardem about whether he is worried about being typecast, he said, ‘No, I am always trying different things.’ And he said, ‘My dream is that when I am old, I will get all the characters that I have played, in one room and 1 will realise that they have nothing to say to each other because they can’t share anything.’ Does it worry you at all that if you got all the characters that you play into one room right now, many of them would be indistinguishable from each other? Or do you believe that they are different?

No, they all have my soul. They’ll all be the same, yes. But a little moustache, a haircut, a beard, a little Harley Davidson jacket... (shrugs) they are all the same.

But that’s not a cause for concern for you.

It is okay if they are the same. What difference does it make? Actually deep down inside, we are all the same. And if your question to me is, ‘Can you be so different?’ Just to be honest, I don’t think I am a good enough actor to be so different. But if it is just about cutting hair and building six-packs, I can do it. If you think that is different. Like people tell me, ‘You are very different in Chak De India,’ I would like to break that notion. Not at all, I was not different in Chak De India at all. People are like, ‘Oh, we loved you in Swades,’ but I was the same guy. I don’t find it different. Maybe different for me is really radically different. And if somebody turns around and tells me but you are the same, I have great pride in that too.

After your infamous brawl with Salman Khan, a news magazine ran a piece saying that perhaps the Hindi movie superstars should take a page out of the book of the Southern superstars who let their work speak for them because at least it makes for more interesting cinema. Do you agree with that?

Absolutely. I am really ashamed of what happened. And I can’t speak for anybody else but for myself. Forget the world, forget the media and what they say, forget you, forget everybody but I think it is really shameful of me to come back home and wake up to an article where my kids ask me, ‘Did you have a fight?’ ‘Did you have a brawl?’ ‘Were you drunk?’

I am very conventional that way. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking our dad is a big star who goes out at night, drinks a little, fights and comes back. I really do believe that it is a wrong thing. I should not have... not at this age. And I think I need to make my work speak for itself. I apologise to everybody who has been reading this trash in the newspaper, and television. Please look at the nicer things that I do. I work very hard. I respect women, I love children and I try to entertain everyone.The idea is to bring smiles to your faces. This is a little blotch or a blot, that I have done and 1 am also human. But I also don’t think it is right even if it is once in a year. I apologise for it and it is wrong.

When I researched the book I wrote on you, even people who had never worked with you talked about you with affection. It was very hard to get anyone to say something bad about you. Now this wellspring of love seems to have abated a little. I saw some film magazine a couple of months ago that ran a cover on why you are the most hated man in the industry. What has changed?

I think the success has gone beyond the love. I don’t know. Maybe I am doing bad things.

Does it bother you?

It doesn’t bother me. Nothing bothers me at all. I am finally, after many years, quite comfortable knowing myself. How nice I am or how good I am or how bad I am, I know it and I am happy with it. I am very thrilled with it. And I don’t know. I can’t be emotionally available. I need to take out time and be with my kids and spend lot of time with them. It is very important for me now that instead of 200 people liking me, my son and my daughter like me.

Shah Rukh, 20 years and 62 movies, what is the one immutable truth that you have learnt about showbiz in all this time?

One, there is no business like show business. This is it, it is so beautiful. Last to last night, I was sitting in my room and I was thinking about work so much, and I have got much more than I deserve out of that. I am so happy. Then this new Friday is coming, and I am all anxious and I am all excited and I am all scared and I am all worried and I am all happy. And this whole thing that I do for years and years, it is all rolled into one film on that one Friday. One evening is what I work for. That is what the whole film industry works for. Everything that you have, the money, the fame, the name, everything apart from the family, everything that I have is just dependent on that Friday. Sometimes, even the family because like... the holiday is going to get spoilt now if the film doesn’t do well.