Shah Rukh Khan: Many actors have come and gone in the history of Indian cinema, but the position and stardom achieved by Shahrukh Khan is an example. The year 1990s… when being a hero in Bollywood only meant beating up goons on screen and roaming around trees with the heroine. In the same period, a common boy from Delhi comes to Mumbai and takes decisions which even the big superstars of that period were not able to dare to take.

Today we are talking about the ‘Badshah’ of Bollywood Shahrukh Khan. But do you know that if the 5 biggest and risky decisions of his career had proved wrong, then perhaps Hindi cinema would never have got its ‘King’ today? So, let us know through this article about those 5 decisions of King Khan which changed his fate as well as the history of entire Bollywood.

Shah Rukh Khan said goodbye to TV industry

Let’s start with the year 1991, when Shahrukh Khan was not an unknown face. Through Doordarshan’s superhit shows ‘Fauji’ and ‘Circus’, he had become the darling of every Indian household. At that time, getting such stardom on television was a big thing. But Shahrukh’s dreams were much bigger than this small screen.

He took a decision that shocked even those close to him—he said goodbye to the TV industry! This may seem normal in today’s times, but in those days, TV actors did not get work in films easily, they were rejected as just ‘small screen actors’. Shahrukh came to Mumbai without any godfather.

If his first film ‘Deewana’, released in 1992, had flopped at the box office, he would have neither been left with TV nor any place in Bollywood. This was a turning point where his career could have been over forever before it even started. But fate had something else in store, the film was a superhit and cinema got its new star.

Said yes to the role of villain

Shah Rukh Khan became a star with his very first film ‘Deewana’, but the most dangerous turn of his career was yet to come. While every new actor was busy in creating his ‘chocolate boy’ or ‘lover boy’ image, Shahrukh took a decision in the year 1993 which shocked the entire industry. This was his second biggest decision – choosing the path of anti-hero i.e. villain in the initial phase of his career.

Today we consider films like ‘Baazigar’ and ‘Darr’ as cult classics, but at that time, the scripts of these films were rejected by many big stars like Aamir Khan and Salman Khan simply because they feared that becoming a villain would end their hero career forever. But Shah Rukh Khan challenged this fear. He played the role of an eccentric, obsessive lover Rahul Mehra in the film ‘Darr’ and in ‘Baazigar’ he became an anti-hero who throws the heroine off the roof to take revenge.

This could prove to be a decision that would close all doors for him to become a hero. But Shahrukh’s tremendous acting created history. Instead of hating this villain, the audience started loving him, and this was the beginning of an anti-hero of Hindi cinema who would later become the king of romance.

Accepted romantic role after villain

But the fear that Shah Rukh Khan had created in the hearts of the audience by becoming a villain was not so easy to erase. By 1995, he had become known in the industry as an eccentric and intense actor. Then came his third biggest decision – saying yes to a film which he himself never wanted to do… Raj Malhotra of ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’.

After repeated persuasion by Aditya Chopra, Shah Rukh Khan accepted this risk with a heavy heart. outcome? DDLJ became the biggest blockbuster in the history of Indian cinema. This film ran for decades in Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir theater and Shahrukh, whom people had considered a villain, became the world’s biggest romantic superstar overnight.

Experimented out of the box

After this spectacular success of DDLJ, Shah Rukh Khan had become the ‘King of Romance’ of India. Now whatever romantic film he did, it would rain money at the box office. It was very easy for any actor to remain in this safe zone. But this is where his fourth biggest decision comes to the fore – despite being at the peak of superstardom, putting his built-up romantic image at stake and doing out-of-the-box experiments.

When the entire nation wanted to see him romancing on screen with open arms, Shahrukh chose Ashutosh Gowariker’s film ‘Swades’ in 2004, in which he played the role of Mohan Bhargava, a serious NASA scientist.

After this, in the year 2007, he did ‘Chak De! In ‘India’, he played the role of Kabir Khan, a hockey coach who is accused of treason. There was neither any glamor in this film, nor any heroine nor any signature romantic style of Shah Rukh Khan. It was a big risk for a global superstar to give up his biggest USP i.e. romance and do such serious films.

If these films had been badly rejected, his commercial stardom could have been in danger. Even though ‘Swades’ did not do well at the box office at that time, today both these films are considered to be the best performances of Shahrukh Khan’s career.

Bet on VFX studio

These films proved that Shah Rukh Khan is the king of acting, but his vision was not limited to films only. When a superstar’s career is limited to lifestyle and expensive cars, then Shahrukh took a decision which made him the king not only of Bollywood but also of the business world. This was his fifth and biggest visionary decision—taking a risk of crores of rupees to start his own production house ‘Red Chillies Entertainment’, India’s most hi-tech VFX studio, and invest in IPL.

When he started ‘Red Chillies’ in 2002, he invested his hard-earned money from his films to build a world-class VFX studio in India. People were calling him crazy, because at that time there was no future for digital cinema in India. Not only this, when IPL came in 2008, he bought the KKR team by investing crores of rupees.

In the beginning the team lost continuously, suffered huge losses and was also criticized in the media. If his business mindset had failed, Shah Rukh Khan would have drowned in debt. But look at the results today—KKR is one of the most successful teams in the IPL, and no big Bollywood action film today can be imagined without Red Chillies VFX.

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