Shah Rukh Khan shares his dreams

Big screen heartbreaker, badshah of brands, doting dad and businessman - Shah Rukh Khan seems comfortable in most real life roles he has to play.

While most of his counterparts have been courting Hollywood, Shah Rukh has been adding finishing touches to his films (Shimit Amin’s Chak De! India and Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om), has just come home with a French honour (Officier dans l’ Ordre des Arts des Lettres - a first for an Indian actor), will have his statue installed at French Graven Museum in Paris very soon and might even get to meet Queen Elizabeth for the London premiere of a film.

The man who’s always in news, comes out of his self-imposed exile (he makes public appearances only when a movie is about to release or he has to promote a brand he’s endorsing) and in an interview with AT, he admits that after doing “a lot of work in the last decade because my heart said ‘yes’ and I’m no longer in the phase where I do a film because it has action or romance.

The script decides things for me.” In his newest flick, Shah Rukh even moves away from his larger-than-life image, and works with 16 newcomers. “Even after 18 years in the profession, I learnt a lot from the newcomers - their rawness, desire to work hard and passion to excel touches you.

And contrary to reports in the media, director Shimit (Amin) and I had no fallout - I’ve known him since our Asoka days, he’s very bright,” he says.

While most of B-town’s superstars have little business sense, SRK is reported to have sold the worldwide rights of OSO for a whopping Rs 75 crore, is in talks with Anuradha Prasad to co-produce TV shows and has mega plans for the Red Chillies VFX wing.

I wish I was getting that amount for OSO, though I admit that thanks to the many avenues, like satellite and music rights, producers get to earn more money from films. In 2004, Main Hoon Na opened to Rs 5 crore, today most films make more money than that in the first weekends. As for TV, Anu is an old friend and she wants me to produce a show for her TV channel. So I have asked my Red Chillies team to make a presentation in November about TV shows and we’ll take it from there.”

SRK who’d once planned a film studio in Mumbai sounds disheartened when he says “that’s not happening anymore. Land’s very expensive in Mumbai and I can’t afford it. I am very satisfied with the VFX and we at Red Chillies have been doing (Main Hoon Na, Paheli, Don, Honeymoon Travels, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, OSO, Chak De) -we are just about breaking even and aren’t in the profit mode yet.

I want to attract work for us from outside. The problem is that final VFX assimilation in India works out to be very expensive and needs visualisers. I am planning a film with Shankar and we’ll be looking at lots of VFX for that. I want to give back to the industry by improving the quality of special effects.”

SRK claims he owes his new trim avatar to “a regular workout regime to combat a nagging backpain and to please son Aryan. I can never look like a hunk, but being fit helps. I didn’t lose weight for a film, it just happened over a period of time.” As talk veers to his relationship with Amitabh Bachchan, SRK confesses that he’s no longer “upset with idle gossip anymore.

There never was any friction between us. Recently Mr Bachchan sent me a branded jacket after I won the French award and I sent him one too. We keep interacting with each other. There never has been any awkwardness between us.”

Once the greasepaint comes off, SRK likes to read, play football with friends, play games on his laptop, teach his children, attend their sports/annual day functions and plans his work schedule “according to their vacation.” On his wishlist are: “a happy, healthy life for my children, lots of good work for me, the latest i-phone, some land for my studio and more hours in a day.

Otherwise I am fairly content, reasonably well-paid and think God’s been partial to me. Amen to that.

Source: Timesofindia