Shah Rukh Khan interview Star Talk - Part 1 (year: 2000)

One of the reasons why I believe that Shah Rukh is not a calculating, manipulative guy... the way he's often portrayed in the media... is because he gives such contradictory answers in interviews. It's as if the word comes out as soon as he thinks it.

A lot of people can't accept that. They think because their thought process is slow, other's thought process must work at the same slo-mo pace too. But after watching so many of his interviews, I think that Shah Rukh can come up with about 2-3 different versions of the answer to a question even before the interviewer has finished asking it. If you put him in front of a camera, shove a mike to his face, and ask him the same question 10 times... he can give you 10 different answers to it. And if you bug him again about it, he can continue talking until your time runs out XD.

There're certain things he repeats, and those are facts you can find in his biographies, but most of the stuff he talks on and on about are ideas. And his ideas are ever flexible, interchangeable, moving forwards or backwards depending on his mood, his interviewer, what book he read on the way to the set, and maybe even on the weather. The words come out lightning fast and full of points to ponder that by the end of the session you've forgotten most of what he says. That's probably why the journos have kept asking him the same questions again and again in the course of his almost 2-decade career.

You tell me don't do this, and I'll do it....

• Now I want my films to get bigger and bigger so she can see them from the top.
• I cannot take myself too seriously. I'm not someone to be on a pedestal. I'm not someone who should be taken as a role model. I am someone who's just supposed to come and dance and sing and make everyone happy. At the end of it all I'm just a guy who used to act on street theater.
• People have a misconception that I'm very confident. It's not that. The logic is I had nothing to lose. Now I'm scared. I have everything to lose. I'm nervous. I'm not as blunt as I used to be. Now I bend. It makes me sad but that's the way it is.
• I don't like people saying, "Don't do this." It's like a little child, you don't tell a child not to do this. I'm just like that. It wasn't out of pompous behaviour, it wasn't out of arrogance. It was just because I'm a kid. I really am a child. You tell me don't do this, and I'll do it.
• I've never done anything with any calculation. And I don't calculate at all. I just go and open my heart and do it.
• My wife tells me that, "You know, you being upfront and your sense of humour... a lot of people don't understand. So please shut up."