When Shah Rukh Khan confessed he doesn’t have the patience to play real characters

When Shah Rukh Khan was offered an opportunity to play Dr Ambedkar by Jabbar Patel he turned down the part arguing, “I like to play characters I can create on screen. Perhaps guys who don’t really exist? If I play Mahatma Gandhi I can’t improvise. I don’t have the will, patience or perhaps even the talent to play real characters. I’m still not prepared to play historical characters. It isn’t as though I’m not open to challenging roles. I have done several really challenging roles. But I like to go into unexplored areas. Like I wouldn’t mind playing Idi Amin. But I can’t play a real-life saint. Nobody would be interested in the character’s grey areas. That would be like blasphemy. There are lots of actors like Naseerbhai, Nana and Kamal Haasan who have very strong social or political convictions. They are suited to tackle such characters.”

At one point in his career, Shah Rukh was being compared with Hrithik Roshan who had just made a bludgeoning impact with Kaho Naa…Pyar Hai.

When I asked him about this the response was vintage SRK. “For me the film not my costars is important. With due respects to Hrithik, Salman, Aamir and all my other colleagues when you talk Shah Rukh Khan you can’t touch this. I may be wrong. But that’s how I feel. People may think I’m being pompous. But I genuinely feel that I work very hard. And nobody messes around with me. From Motilal to my son Aryan, nobody can touch this.”

Addressing the comparisons with Roshan headlong SRK had said, “It’s so stupid, but every year since I came into films someone or the other is about to overtake me. When I came I was a nobody. In some ways, I’m still a nobody. So overtaking me is no big deal. If you want to be successful you need to be yourself. The achievement is not in removing Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan. The achievement is in being Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan.”

He also admitted that he was equally proud of all his films. “All of them were done with the intention of doing something from the heart. Like my first film Deewana? Do you know director Raj Kanwar had already shot with Armaan Kohli before I stepped into the role? I just followed Raj Kanwar’s instructions in Deewana. In that sense, I owe the impact I made to him. Obviously, his style was different from mine. But the passion was the same. Even in Mr Yash Chopra’s films, we shared an equal passion, though his style of acting was different from mine. See,I need to be instructed by my directors. But nobody can tell me to do a scene exactly like him. My scenes are done the Shah Rukh Khan way.”

About his closely knit circle of friends who have been with him for decades, Shah Rukh said, “I’m very lucky with my friends. Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar aren’t in my life because of the work. People like Karan and Adi were my friends from before we came into movies. Neither me nor they have ever been in a situation where we need to work together to remain friends. Once I finish work with any of my friends, we don’t need to quickly move on to the next project just to keep relations alive.

Once I asked SRK what kept him going and pat came the reply. “I have a unique way of dealing with life. I never fight it. I take it on its own terms. I first go with the flow and then I overtake it. So far I’ve never had to fight against fate.”

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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