02 February,2010 08:27 AM IST | | Shradha Sukumaran
Even as Shah Rukh Khan's comments on the IPL-Pak team controversy had the Shiv Sena beat an angry path to his door on Sunday, he's in the spotlight in another corner of the world. British magazine Empire, one of the world's biggest film publications, has done a huge, in-depth profile of the star in its February issue, titled (oh-my-god-we-never-would-have-guessed) 'King Khan'.
It's part of some of our jobs to read up on everything that the Khans, the Kapoors and the Kumars are up to, yet you approach a profile like this with a greater appetite. After all, how does a film journalist from the west view SRK? Well, for starters, writer Sam Toy is impressed that the taxiwallah knows King Khan and nods, "yes, he is our country's biggest star", while on the way to Mannat. He's even more impressed that Shah Rukh looks younger than 44.
SRK dwells on how he's called the 'Tom Cruise' of India, but will feel embarrassed if Cruise finds that out
Yet this is the bit with which we're concerned u2014 does Shah Rukh sound the same way he does in interviews conducted back home? As film scribes know, most Bollywood stars tend to acquire a strange twang when a British or American TV crew or writer is in the room, and you read concocted stories about how they can't bear to step out of their living rooms because they're afraid Indian fans will crawl all over them. There's usually a neat little harangue against the media, added on for good measure.
Shah Rukh, mercifully, spares us this drama, only dwelling on how he's called the 'Tom Cruise of India', but cringes in embarrassment at the thought of the Mission Impossible star ever finding that out. Shah Rukh's ego sometimes makes an appearance in interviews before he does, but not in this one. After all, you wonder what the writer would have made of the Hollywood star inscribed with 'SUPERSTAR' that was nailed onto the door of his room at his old office in Khar. On my first meeting with the star in 2003, I was struck by how easy, polite and patient he was, but never forgot how he responded when I pointed at the star. Shrugging expansively, he said, "That's me!"
But as with every Shah Rukh interview, you learn something new. In a blurb devoted to his on-set injuries, here are some you don't recall: Dil Se, a toe, One Two Ka Four an ankle, and Om Shanti Om lungs (from a fire extinguisher) and singed hair.
