I don't even know what method acting is: Aamir Khan

I don't even know what method acting is'

Aamir Khan on selecting his projects, taking risks and the things that scare him...

He flips out over scripts his retinue read as suicide. He greenlights roles for the feels, not future TRPs. Which, in fickle Bollywood, should foretell tales of swift to middling failure. So how has Aamir Khan, this recidivist risk-taker, parlayed his unscientific method into one of the most successful film careers of all time? In GQ India's July 2016 edition, AK talks about all this and more. Read on for excerpts...

Risk-taker

Aamir has managed to sustain a multi-decade career, calibrating the eccentric credibility of a pre-Pirates Johnny Depp with the surefire blockbusterism of a Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise, and kept his nose clean all the while. What is this process? This method? This science? "I don't know," he sighs. "People always used to think I was crazy. When I did Lagaan, everyone said sports films wouldn't work in India, period films wouldn't work in India, and there I was in a dhoti, speaking a dialect that's not even Hindi" " plus the thing clocked in at 3 hours and 42 minutes " "and I was saying, It may be a disaster, but I just love it and I want to do it.'" Lagaan turned out to be one of the biggest hits of 2001 in India. It won a National Award for Best Popular Film, was nominated for an Oscar, and Time ranked it as one of the 25 best sports movies of all-time.

"One time," he recalls, "years ago, my sister called me up and said, So have you signed any films?' Because, in my family they keep joking how I don't do any work " and I said, Yes, in fact, I have.' And she was like, Wow! Which film is it?' And I said It's the fifth remake of Bhagat Singh and (Chandrashekar) Azad.' Now, this was a story that had been told four times already that past year, the last of which had just released two months before, and none of them had worked. And my sister said, You gotta be kidding me.'" Rang De Basanti became the highest grossing Indian film in its opening weekend for 2006, received a National Film Award, and won Best Film from IIFA and Filmfare. "Now I think people have reached a point where they say, Maybe he knows what he's doing.'"

Second thoughts?

Even if it means doing a Robert De Niro Raging Bull regimen in reverse, to inhabit wrestling guru Mahavir Singh Phogat, for the upcoming Dangal, a film about how a Haryanvi man, a dedicated athlete who never quite reached his potential, decided to train his four daughters " and two nieces " in his beloved art of kushti instead of selling them off into local convention.

"The only doubt I had " and I'm being honest over here " is that I'd just done Dhoom:3, I've just done PK, I was looking my best. I was at 9 per cent body fat. I may be over 50, but I'm playing characters who are more like 30. So I'm thinking, Do I want to become a fat, grey-haired 55-year-old father? Can't I wait until I'm 60 to do this?' But I couldn't get the script out of my head. So (a few months later) I asked Nitesh Tiwari to narrate it again...Then I heard it for the third time, eight months later, or one year later. And I thought I just want do it yaar.'"

Not a method actor

Aamir insists there is no conscious pattern to his choices, no scientific method, however much we recognise his work as having opened conversations too often left closed. "I just have to love the story," he says. "It just has to speak to me."

Aamir Khan hates being called a method actor. Maybe even more than he hates being called an activist. "I don't even know what method acting is," he jokes. "I never had a formal education in acting."

"I come from a film family," begins his story. "My father was a producer and my uncle was one of the leading film-makers of his time. So I grew up with films being made around me. My earliest memory is being seven, when I started sitting in when the writers and directors would come pitch stories to my father. I would just sit in a corner and listen to those stories, I must have heard hundreds, all these film ideas, from when I was seven to when I was about 15."

"I've learned filmmaking by watching the whole process unfolding in front of me, ever since I was a child. A lot of people who aren't from a film background or have not been to film school, they may not understand editing, for example. But for me, I used to watch it happening. I mean, even now I'm learning, but a lot of my learning in the early stages came by making mistakes, by making an ass of myself. So no, I'm not a method actor. For some reason, the Indian media calls me that, I don't know why," says Aamir.

Stress factor

"I am always scared a film won't turn out the way we want. I stress over small things, like something in the schedule going for a toss. And I always have this worry, What if I die? What if I get injured really badly when the whole film is dependent on me?' So, typically, towards the end of a shoot, I write a note to people around me that says, If I die, these are the things I want ideally to happen...', whether it's creative or connected to the release," he says. "Anything can happen, life is unpredictable. So for Dangal, with these five months off between shoots, I told Nitesh, If anything happens to me, everything is still on. You just have to cast a younger Mahavir and you'll still have the film.' Varun, Shahid " any actor would like to do it. Ranveer? Maybe Ranbir?"