Aamir Khan Opens Up About Bollywood Success as Actor, Producer: “I Don’t Find Anything Easy”
India‘s Aamir Khan (Dangal) may be a Bollywood action star and producer, having delivered box office hits like 3 Idiots and Peepli Live, a non-musical satire that skewered India’s rural/urban divide.
But Khan insists good luck and welcome “accidents” rather than any certainty or confidence have led him during every movie he completed. “I don’t find anything easy. Each film I pick, I’m nervous I’ll be able to pull it off. I approach each film with a lot of nervousness, and excitement,” Khan told the Red Sea Film Festival during an informal conversation Thursday.
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He’s had the freedom to act in and produce movies and tell stories he wants to tell. But Khan knows especially when producing movies, the slightest slip and he risks “the whole film will come crashing down.”
If anything, the Bollywood action hero’s initial reluctance to produce movies came when he a child watching his father, late Tahir Hussain, working as a renowned producer in Bollywood where he financed several projects.
“I’d seen my father go through hell. It’s a thankless job,” he said of producing films in Bollywood. But that was before the script for Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan fell into his lap. He liked the screenplay, but couldn’t join the project as Khan didn’t see any producer in Bollywood who could do justice to the Lagaan project.
“I was afraid the producer would start arm-twisting the director. And so I was nervous,” Khan recalled. But over a period of 18 months, the Lagaan script grew on him and he agreed to make it his debut producing project.
The cricket-based film’s success, including as India’s 2001 Oscar entry, quite by chance followed a world premiere in Locarno. “(Lagaan) won the audience award for best film. And it took off, on its own. It went from country to country, releasing in Europe. Everything happened organically and the film did everything. I was pulled along with it,” Khan added.
The success of Lagaan also convinced the Bollywood star to overcome his longstanding reluctance and follow his father and other industry role models into producing movies. “At the time, I was still hesitating to commit. I thought look at the filmmakers you look up to, all of these directors. they took risks, they went with their heart,” he told the Red Sea audience in Jeddah.
“I said to myself, if you want to do great work, you have to take risks, like the people you look up to,” Khan recalled. The Bollywood star will also receive an industry honor when the fourth edition of the Red Sea Film Festival kicks off Thursday night.
The Red Sea Film Festival continues through Dec. 14.
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