Over 50, Shah Rukh Khan appeals more to the mind than anything else
"I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, I don't plan for tomorrow. I get up every day thinking about that day, that moment. This is the most important moment for me as of now, this is the most important day of my life. But given an opportunity, and if I have the talent and the resilience, the hunger, the drive - and if, hopefully, I am not driven by the need for money, I can choose what I want to do - I would like to continue as far as it goes. Otherwise, it is on the audience, if they don't want to see me they can change me just like a mobile phone, can't they?"
In February 2006, this was Shah Rukh Khan's answer to a question on his amount of involvement in his work about 20 years from then (Uncut, Anshul Chaturvedi). We're almost a decade down now, and as Shah Rukh Khan has time and again proven it, he has indeed not slowed down. If anything at all, his "hunger", "resilience" and "drive" are at a point now where he's doing three films in the year he is 50. As the superstar's clock says half-a-century, it is an opportunity to see why Shah Rukh is so much the sapiosexual's man-to-admire these days than anything else.
Sure, the King of Romance is still a hit with women one-third his age, and not just for his looks. It's been argued, dissected, pointed out ad nauseam ad infinitum, this Khan is not your average looker in an industry that survives on looks. But this Delhi boy made his way up the ladder on hard work and the mix of choosing his work well. There have been debacles in Khan's 23-year-long film career, but the superstar has erased all of that with more work. At 50, he is busier with his shooting than he probably was at 25. His modus operandi has been packing in as much activity in a day as it can hold. He has gone on to say how he wished a day had 80 hours, but since it didn't, he had to make do with the mere 24. And he made up by sleeping just about four-five hours a day. So, if on one day he got only an hour's sleep, he made up for it on a flight from Los Angeles to Mumbai by sleeping 16 hours straight the next day.
Shah Rukh's mantra of success, as the actor has claimed in so many interactions, interviews - is work. At 50, the man is taking on work by the shovelful, and his fans are not complaining. His tried-and-tested methods of acting are right there in his films, but so are newer, different things. His romancing women half his age on screen is still right there in his films, but so is an impassioned speech by Kabir Khan to his women's hockey team. And for all the accusations that his detractors have made against Khan, it is not quite that he doesn't want to try anything new "at this age".
Here's an excerpt from an interview of his from August 2009 (Uncut): "When I say it ('at this age', and Shah Rukh was 43 then), I am sending a message to filmmakers to not ask me to dance around with girls who are my daughter's age and make me tell them, I love you! If I can do a little more than that... I think I am at a good stage of enactment. I think my craft is a little better than where it was 15 years ago. ... I hope people begin to make things with me in mind where I am able to show that my craft has improved, that I can do all that I have done for 20 years, amalgamate it, take it together, and give something new."
Maybe, after all, it is a tad more difficult for a superstar to live up to his audience's expectations. While some people want them to push themselves and swim against the tide just *once* in a while, if not always, there are many times that number who want the same from a Shah Rukh or a Salman. So, when Shah Rukh does a Chennai Express or a Happy New Year, his last two films (dizzying box office success, critically trashed), they work. Some people question why the actor isn't doing more films that "appeal to the mind", and the answer is provided by the so many others who *want* Shah Rukh the way they have seen him for a while now. "They find a lot of things funny, including the way I romance on screen," was Khan saying how his children found the way he romanced on screen funny. The same arms-outstretched pose that has spun hundreds and thousands of crore for Shah Rukh Khan.
Change is scary. Accepting a superstar in a role that might or might not work is scary for both the people whose money go into the production of these films and the people who consume them. Do what you have been doing, and all will be well. Or not.
In this superstar, in his 50 years, out of which he has spent near-three-decades entertaining the country, his mind has probably overshadowed all else. Yes, even that six-pack that he worked for so religiously during Om Shanti Om or the highlights in his hair during his Happy New Year days. Shah Rukh Khan is not exactly famous for his reticence. "Politically correct" isn't a term anyone would associate with him. He is one of the most well-spoken actors the industry can currently boast of, and to credit it all is a mind that refuses to age. Coupled with his inimitable wit is the will to not sound boring - no matter who he is talking to - is what makes Shah Rukh Khan a delight to speak to. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to speak to this genius with words will agree to that.
"Old age, for me? The way I am going, about a 140. That's what my friends say. I'm 46 tomorrow - so about a hundred to go!"
At 50, Khan has about 90 years to call himself "old". A long time before we can finally tire of him ... as of now, the Badshah rules!