Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan took center stage at the 77th Locarno Film Festival for an in-depth masterclass conversation with festival director Giona A. Nazzaro on Sunday.
The wide-ranging discussion touched on Khan’s 30-plus year career, his approach to acting, and his thoughts on stardom and the film industry. The event was packed to the rafters with fans of multiple nationalities who punctuated several of the icon’s answers with cries of “I love you, Shah Rukh!”
Khan began by recounting his early exposure to cinema through his mother, who was a film fan. “We had what was known as a video cassette recorder… it was a big thing to own one,” he said. “My mother’s sister was very rich, so she gifted us one.” The actor described watching films while massaging his mother’s feet, a common cultural practice in India. His first theatrical film experience came after earning top marks in Hindi-language class, when his mother took him to see Yash Chopra’s “Joshila.”
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After a stint in theater in Delhi, Khan said he initially came to Mumbai in 1990, intending to work for just one year. “I thought I’d work for a year, earn one lakh rupee (INR100,000, then $5,715), buy myself a house, and then go back and become a scientist or a mass communication journalist,” he said. “And I haven’t gone back yet.”
Khan shared an anecdote about his early days in the industry, recalling a meeting with a famous director. “He said, the most attractive part of you is that you’re very ugly, you know, because all these heroes, they look really Swiss chocolate-like. I didn’t look like Swiss chocolate. So I said, okay, if I’m ugly, I’ll do bad guy roles.”
This encounter led Khan to initially take on villainous roles, including Yash Chopra’s “Darr,” which was filmed in Switzerland. It was during this time that Chopra approached him for a romantic lead, saying, “I want to cast you in a love story. You don’t look such a bad guy.” That film was the iconic “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” directed by Aditya Chopra. “I’m now the Swiss chocolate boy,” he quipped.
Khan was awarded Locarno’s career achievement honor on Saturday. “For me, it’s like a full circle to have gone from Switzerland to getting the highest award in Switzerland.”
The session was interactive with the audience singing some of the star’s hit numbers and him demonstrating his famous arms outstretched pose, which he explained was a ploy that choreographer Saroj Khan came up with to spare him difficult dance steps.
Discussing his approach to selecting films, Khan spoke about the importance of spending time with directors. “I take a long time because I want to spend a lot of time with the person who’s going to direct me. Why? Because you spend a year of your life with them,” he explained. “I really want to have fun. And when I say fun is not dancing and drinking, it’s just talking about films getting to know each other.”
Khan’s next film, “King,” is an action-drama to be directed by Sujoy Ghosh. The filmmaker had previously directed “Badla” for Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment. “There’s a certain kind of film I want to do, where maybe it’s more age-centric, and I want to try something, for six, seven years, I’ve been thinking about it, and I mentioned it to Sujoy one day… and he says that I have a subject. So it’s as simple as that.”
The conversation turned to Khan’s 2016 film “Fan,” in which he played dual roles as a superstar and his obsessed fan. “Normally, when you play a superstar in a film, it’s all glory and bigness and people jumping and screaming your name. But I wanted this guy to be scared of his stardom, which is very difficult to do it, because it’s like exposing a part of every star that is in the world.” He added that the process was “very schizophrenic, very strange, very awkward” and that he “actually started feeling like two people.”
The actor also revealed a behind-the-scenes detail about the prosthetics used in “Fan,” mentioning that the jaw prosthetic was originally made for Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
On the topic of stardom, Khan offered a unique perspective: “I wear stardom like a T-shirt, not like a tuxedo,” he said. “It’s not important, and it’s there. I’m careless about it, and it’s very nice, and I hope it remains.” He underlined that stardom is a byproduct of his work, not the goal itself.
The actor discussed his recent foray into South Indian cinema with the film “Jawan,” directed by Tamil filmmaker Atlee. He praised South Indian cinema’s storytelling and technical prowess, calling it “really, really fantastic.”
Khan reflected on the evolution of visual effects in Indian cinema while emphasizing that technology should remain secondary to storytelling. “I think at the end of it all, technology is going to be the backdrop, not the backbone of filmmaking,” he said. “It will always be the nuances, the emotions, the thoughts, the basic, simple truths of human beings…which are going to mount a film on the back of technology.”
When asked about what drives him after decades in the industry, Khan spoke about his desire to continue bringing joy to audiences. “I think cinema embodies many facets of life, so many emotions that’s very difficult and impossible for one person to be able to express all of them in one lifetime,” he said. “I live with that hope that maybe I can keep on doing different films.”
