I don’t try to please anyone. I make films for myself, not critics: Shah Rukh

Actor Shah Rukh Khan — who was in Delhi on Tuesday — got talking about how he signs projects, and that he doesn’t mind settling for the second best or third best offer.

With a career graph spanning two and a half decades, actor Shah Rukh Khan is unstoppable. Whether it’s the highest grosser at the box office or a flop film that died without noise, he has been there and done it all. At this stage, ask him if he makes films for critics or fans, and the 51-year-old — who was in Delhi on Tuesday — said: “Without trying to sound arrogant or selfish, I feel that an actor has to do a film for himself or herself. I’ve never tried to please anyone. You can’t please all the people all the time. A film does that. Try to please a set of people, and you end up pleasing nobody, including yourself.”

Actor Shah Rukh Khan feels if an actor tries to please a particular set of people, he ends up pleasing nobody, including himself. (Shivam Saxena/HT Photo)

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Does he trust his gut feeling when it comes to how a film will be received? You can’t really tell, said SRK, citing the example of his 2007 hit, Chak De! India. “I liked the film because I loved doing my part. So I don’t plan it like that. I never thought I’d do a film like Fan (2016). I said yes to it because I wanted to find out if at the age of 50, I can be at a place I’ve never been in before and go unabashedly — screw myself up, in the head, in the heart. And hope it turned out well.”

Actor Shah Rukh Khan says a workaholic like him cannot sit idle at home. (Shivam Saxena/HT Photo)

Calling himself a filmmaker’s actor, Shah Rukh added that actors needn’t think too much before signing a film. “I don’t think actors should decide what films to do. The director should decide the film they want to make. It’s not like an actor always has to do hatke (unique) films. But I think the directors and the writers have to decide, and an actor has to do what the filmmaker wants him or her to do.”

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Another reason for that, SRK said, is that an actor may not be fortunate enough at that point to get the kind of film he or she wants to do. “If you feel like doing a particular thing, you just hope that it comes along. But if it doesn’t, you cannot sit back home and a workaholic like me will do the second best of third best that I am given.”

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