Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan is an Indian actor and producer, known to his audiences as SRK and "King Khan". ^{1 2} From the 1990s he dominated the Indian screen — first as a screen villain, then as the defining romantic hero of his generation — and films such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) and My Name Is Khan (2010) carried him to one of the largest audiences of any actor in the world. ² In 2023, after a five-year retreat from leading roles, Pathaan and Jawan returned him to the top of the box office, and Jawan won him the National Film Award for Best Actor. ^{1 2}

He was born on 2 November 1965 in New Delhi, into a Muslim family. ^{1 3} His father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, was an independence activist who had worked with Abdul Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar movement and moved to Delhi in 1946, and his mother, Lateef Fatima, was a magistrate. ¹ Khan has described his ancestry, in a 2010 statement quoted by the article, as "half Hyderabadi (mother), half Pathan (father), and some Kashmiri (grandmother)", while cousins in Peshawar dispute the Pashtun claim, saying the family speaks Hindko and came originally from Kashmir. ¹ He grew up in Delhi's Rajendra Nagar, attended St Columba's School, where he won the Sword of Honour, and read economics at Hansraj College from 1985 to 1988. ¹ He acted with Barry John's Theatre Action Group. ¹ His father died of cancer in 1981 and his mother of diabetes in 1991, and his sister Shahnaz Lalarukh lives with his family. ¹

His television debut came in the serial Fauji in 1989, and his film debut in Deewana in 1992. ^{1 2} He made his name playing anti-heroes and villains in Baazigar, Darr and Anjaam, roles established stars had refused. ²

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) recast him as the romantic hero, and the film was still running at Mumbai's Maratha Mandir cinema after more than a thousand weeks in early 2015. ^{1 2} Dil To Pagal Hai and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai confirmed the new image. ²

He widened his range in Devdas (2002), Swades (2004) and Chak De! India (2007), in which, the critic Bhaichand Patel wrote in a passage the article quotes, he portrayed himself as a "cosmopolitan, liberal, Indian Muslim". ¹ In My Name Is Khan (2010) he played Rizwan Khan, a Muslim man with Asperger syndrome travelling across a post-9/11 America. ^{4 2}

After the failures of Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Zero (2018) he withdrew from leading roles for some five years. ² In 2023 he returned with three films — the spy thriller Pathaan, Jawan, in which he played father and son, and Dunki — and Pathaan and Jawan each passed ₹10 billion at the worldwide box office. ^{1 2} For Jawan he received the National Film Award for Best Actor, sharing the honour with Vikrant Massey. ²

He is co-chairman of Red Chillies Entertainment, restructured from Dreamz Unlimited in 2004, in which his wife Gauri Khan works as a producer. ¹ In 2008 he co-bought the Indian Premier League cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders for US$75.09 million, and the team won the league in 2012, 2014 and 2024. ^{1 2}

He has received fifteen Filmfare Awards, eight of them for Best Actor, a record he shares with Dilip Kumar. ¹ India awarded him the Padma Shri in 2005, and France the Order of Arts and Letters in 2007 and the Legion of Honour in 2014. ^{1 2} He holds five honorary doctorates. ¹ UNESCO gave him its Pyramide con Marni award in 2011, and the World Economic Forum its Crystal Award in 2018. ¹ Newsweek named him among the world's fifty most powerful people in 2008, and TIME placed him in its 100 most influential people in 2023. ¹ In May 2025 he made his debut at the Met Gala, the first Bollywood male actor to attend. ² The English article estimates his net worth at US$1.4 billion as of October 2025, an estimate recorded as the article's own. ¹

He married Gauri Chibber, a Punjabi Hindu, in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony on 25 October 1991, after a six-year courtship. ^{1 3} They have a son, Aryan (born 1997), a daughter, Suhana (born 2000), and a second son, AbRam (born 2013), born through a surrogate mother. ¹ On his own faith the English article records his position directly: according to Khan, while he strongly believes in Islam, he also values his wife's religion; his children follow both religions, and at his home the Qur'an is situated next to the murti of Hindu deities. ¹ No source names a school or legal tradition for him — Wikidata gives his religion as Islam generically — and this museum therefore records his stance as he states it, and no more. ³

Britannica records that he was detained at United States airports on three occasions — Newark in 2009, Westchester County in 2012 and Los Angeles in 2016 — for secondary screening, allegedly because his name matched an entry on a terror watch list. ² In 2015 he was widely criticised for describing India as "intolerant" in an interview. ² In 2021 his son Aryan was arrested in a narcotics case, released on bail after nearly a month in jail, and later cleared of all charges. ²

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