Shah Rukh Khan: King Among Men

SRK, King Khan, Baadshah of Bollywood – no Indian actor has reset the limits of stardom like Shah Rukh Khan. To call him an ‘actor’ is not enough. In South Asia, the UAE, and parts of the Global South, SRK is a household acronym, a brand and an icon, and, as he himself claims, a god of marketing: his face is seared into an entire region’s memory – who does not know that messy shock of hair, the dimpled smile, the narrow eyes looking up mischievously? Khan is one of the most magnetic actors in India, if not the aspiration and blueprint.

On-screen, Khan is revered for his unparalleled range of romantic heroes. Thirty years into his career, he is the only actor of his generation still being cast opposite the up-and-coming heroines of today. Off-screen, the masses love the myth of the man. In interviews and public appearances, Khan has mastered walking the thin line between presenting himself as an approachable, relatable guy and owning his mega-stardom. One minute he jokes with easy familiarity; the next, he reminds his audience that he is the biggest star of Bollywood – incomparable, and at the end of the day, untouchable. “I’m not scared of being overshadowed by anyone in this world,” he has said. At the box office, it doesn’t even really matter if a given film does well or not – the man remains beloved.

SRK did not start off as a heartthrob. His earliest work cast him as a villain: in both Baazigar (1993) and Darr (1993), he played an antagonist who meets his own death. Khan himself didn’t think he had the looks to make it as a popular romantic lead – but then along came Aditya Chopra, the biggest producer in contemporary Bollywood. When he saw Khan in the ’90s, he told the young actor, “Your eyes have something that cannot be wasted on action [films].” Fans seem to agree: on YouTube and TikTok, there are endless compilation videos of SRK’s eyes. It was Chopra who first cast SRK as a romantic lead, in his directorial debut, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayeinge (1995) – a now-classic musical about two star-crossed diaspora Indians. The film was an instant hit domestically and overseas too, and launched Khan as the heartthrob. Three decades later, it is the longest-running film in Indian cinemas.

Khan’s virtuosity comes through in the impressive range of romantic roles he’s taken on: he has played many a passionate lover in the vein of his DDLJ character, yes, but also lovers who are frightful stalkers, clumsy oafs, gangsters, and unwitting terrorists; earnest charmers, tragic heroes, heroes with a mission (and a savior complex), and noble citizens driven by a sense of duty to the nation and its people.

The most popular of SRK’s loverboys are the unswerving romantics of films like DDLJ and Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) – the ones destined to be with their beloved, no matter the odds. So what if her parents disapprove of him, or she has a fiancé already? Either by fate’s hand or through our hero’s persistence, love will find a way. The thrill is in discovering the movie miracle of how. Take Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), for instance: the ridiculous plot revolves around a mission to reunite a widower – our hero – with his high school best friend and true love, conducted by his dead wife through a series of letters.

Many of SRK’s films of the 2000s sold a particular kind of moral hero: the dutiful son, the honest worker, the loyal soldier forced to choose between his devotion to his family or country, and his lover. For love, of course, the hero will turn away from family and nation both. In the family saga K3G, or Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001), SRK plays Rahul Raichand, a doting elder son who is cut off from his millionaire family for marrying beneath his class. In Veer-Zaara (2004), he plays the eponymous Veer, an Indian air force officer who is unjustly imprisoned in Pakistan for 22 years under false allegations of being a spy – a sentence he submits to in order to save Zaara, his Pakistani lover, from a torturous marriage, because her husband-to-be threatens to treat her cruelly if Veer does not plead guilty. By the end of both films, of course, everything has worked itself out. The myth sold by this model of a SRK lover is that the right choice is the one grounded in honor, and that, if the hero just sticks to his moral guns, time will deliver justice and reconciliation – and the girl. The family will reunite; the borders keeping lovers apart will be bridged, and no one is offended: what makes this kind of hero so popular is in part the fact that he rebels when required by his principles, but he does not upend or challenge any social structures in a lasting way.

Across roles, King Khan’s genius emerges in his trademark delivery, gestures, and on-screen habits, which have come to constitute an iconic style. Chopra, the producer, was the first to identify those puppy-dog eyes – and you bet Khan will use them to prolong an emotional scene – but there are other mannerisms too: his expressive use of sound, manifest in the abundant “mmms”  and “heyys" that build emotional tension in lieu of language, especially in scenes where he’s flirting, teasing, upset, or irritated. Then there are the trademark “moments” or scenes: Khan exiting a train with a backpack slung over his shoulder in DDLJ, or dancing atop a moving train in Dil Se (1998). SRK’s mischievous, comic heroes, meanwhile, tend to be easily startled. They playfully dominate whatever space they’re in by tripping and bumping into things – right up until they ‘accidentally’ (wink, wink) succeed at whatever impossible goal they set out to achieve.

Khan’s appeal ultimately lies in repetition, not invention. It doesn’t matter what the role is, he always delivers those codified characteristics that audiences have come to associate with him and the joy of viewing is precisely in that familiarity; that recognition; that expectation being met. When he smiles with his head nodding, you know he’ll playfully lift a finger; when he ruffles his hair, you know he’s in love;  when he throws his shoulder back, you know he’s about to strike his iconic pose, and passionately open his arms towards his beloved.

It’s no accident that so many of his characters have the same names. Dil To Pagal Hai and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai were the first to introduce SRK to viewers as “Rahul”, a name now almost synonymous with the actor. “I am Rahul. There’s no way you haven’t heard my name!” is Khan’s famous introduction in DTPH, memorable for its simultaneous confidence and nonchalance. So, every time SRK says, in yet another movie, “I am Rahul...”, the audience is delighted – we have heard of him before.

But Khan is not content with just imprinting on cinema history – he has said that he wants to stretch the limits of storytelling too. Through Red Chillis Entertainment, the production company he launched with his wife, Gauri, in 2002, Khan has surprised audiences with off-beat, experimental turns in films like My Name is Khan (2010), in which he plays an autistic Muslim in post 9/11 America, and as the titular 3rd century BC emperor in Asoka (2001). His appearance in Dil Se also came out of leftfield: the film is the final entry in Mani Ratnam’s trilogy on terror and communal violence, and mounts a scathing critique of the Indian state’s relationship with the insurgency in the North East. Khan stars as Amarkanth, a radio journalist who falls for a militant, and is subsequently torn between love and country. Nothing compares, however, to the epic tragedy of Devdas (2002), in which all of Khan’s romantic personas coalesce in a single role: Dev is both hero and anti-hero; the perfect lover on a path of self-destruction. The film depicts the unraveling of a man who commits to losing everything with the same intensity that he once committed to love – abandoning his lover Paro, his family, and chasing only the bottle. By the time Dev is reduced to a shell, SRK has given the character every emotion we have previously seen him perform on screen.

In the 2010s, Khan’s career dipped – but last year, he mounted a giant comeback, releasing three blockbuster hits, including the Red Chillis production Jawan (2023), which offers a spicy twist on the anti-heroic hero. In it, the righteous citizen standing up for his people – played by Khan, naturally – happens to be the son of an ex-army officer. The hero is out to expose the rotten system, and to fix it, too – but, unlike Dil Se, which openly pointed a finger at the Indian state, Jawan flattens the complex relationship between history and revolt, and does not lay blame upon any specific power structure beyond a generally “corrupt” system. Khan’s production company seems to be taking on political issues while treading a safe, neutral line.

But nothing really shakes his popularity. Today, King Khan is the fifth richest actor in the world – Indian or otherwise. Aside from his production company, he also owns four cricket teams. His house in Mumbai, dubbed Mannat, overlooks the Arabian sea and is said to be worth a whopping 200 Indian crores.  At 58, reinvigorated by his 2023 comeback, Khan’s career is showing no signs of flagging. The media raves about him; journalists say he rarely has beef with anyone in the industry. On-and off-screen, the SRK brand appears unstoppable. No matter the time of the day, you can find throngs of fans gathered outside Mannat, hoping for a glimpse of the star. Sometimes – like a monarch playing to his adoring subjects – he steps out onto his balcony and strikes his trademark pose: throws his shoulder back, cocks his head to one side, and stretches his arms wide open. The crowd – you can see it in videos – goes berserk.