Shah Rukh Khan: The King of Romance, The Baazigar Who Redefined Indian Cinema

Time is the one opponent nobody gets to beat. Shah Rukh Khan has spent more than three decades making it look negotiable.

At midnight on November 2, 2026, the day he turned 61, he released the music video for Tu Mil Jaaye, the first song from his new film King. It drew nearly 12 million views in its first 12 hours, according to the Sentinel. The song reunites him with Deepika Padukone, brings in Arijit Singh and Madhubanti Bagchi on vocals, and has Ed Sheeran rapping in English, which is not a sentence many people expected to read about a Shah Rukh Khan song.

Shah Rukh Khan, known as SRK, the Baadshah of Bollywood and King Khan, is an Indian actor and film producer with more than 90 films to his name. His story is usually told as a straight line from television to stardom. The real one has more turns: a villain who shocked audiences in 1993, a romantic hero who defined the 1990s, a run of flops that ended in a four-year break from full-time acting, and a 2023 return in which both Pathaan and Jawan crossed ₹1,000 crore. In 2025 he won his first National Film Award. Now he is making an action film with his daughter.

This profile follows that story, from a Delhi boy who wanted to play sport and ended up in a theatre group, to a 61-year-old star who is still very much in the middle of it. Picture abhi baaki hai.

Who Is Shah Rukh Khan?

Shah Rukh Khan is an Indian actor, film producer and television host who works mainly in Hindi cinema, and at 61 he remains one of its biggest stars. He was born on 2 November 1965 in New Delhi.

The name is worth a line. His birth name is Shahrukh Khan, and his company filings use that spelling, but he prefers Shah Rukh Khan, and fans simply write SRK. Away from the screen he is co-chairman of Red Chillies Entertainment, the production company he runs with Gauri Khan, and co-owner of the IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023, and in 2022 readers of Empire magazine voted him one of the 50 greatest actors of all time. Hindi readers can find the story of his rise on Khoobsurat Andaaz, in Shahrukh Khan: King of Romance, the King Khan.

Early Life: Delhi, Mangalore and an Early Loss

Shah Rukh Khan was born in New Delhi but spent his first five years in Mangalore, where his maternal grandfather was chief engineer of the port. He grew up in Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar, in a middle-class family that lived in rented homes.

His father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, was an independence activist from Peshawar who campaigned alongside the Khudai Khidmatgar and later ran several businesses, including a restaurant. His mother, Lateef Fatima, was a magistrate. In 2010 Shah Rukh described himself on X as half Hyderabadi on his mother’s side, half Pathan on his father’s, with some Kashmiri from his grandmother.

At St. Columba’s School he did well in studies, hockey and football and won the school’s highest honour, the Sword of Honour. He hoped for a career in sport until a shoulder injury ended that plan. He turned to the stage instead and became known for his imitations of Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Mumtaz.

At Hansraj College, where he studied economics from 1985 to 1988, much of his time went to Delhi’s Theatre Action Group, with director Barry John as his mentor. His mother pushed him toward engineering, and he has said he cleared the IIT entrance exam, as The Indian Express reported in 2025. He then began a master’s in mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, but left to pursue acting.

Loss shaped those years. His father died of cancer in 1981, and his mother died in 1991 from complications of diabetes. He took on the responsibility of caring for his older sister, Shahnaz Lalarukh. In April 1991 he decided to act in films, citing it as a way to escape the grief of his mother’s death, and moved to Mumbai.

Career: From Fauji Cadet to King

What was Shah Rukh Khan’s first film?

Shah Rukh Khan’s first film to release was Deewana, in June 1992, and it won him the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut. He played the second male lead behind Rishi Kapoor, opposite Divya Bharti. The first film he began shooting was Dil Aashna Hai, Hema Malini’s directorial debut, which also released in 1992, along with Chamatkar and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, the first of many films with Juhi Chawla.

Television had come first. Fauji cast him as army cadet Abhimanyu Rai, and it led to Circus and the miniseries Idiot. Even then, he was not interested in films, believing he was not good enough.

The Villain Years: Baazigar, Darr and Anjaam

Audiences first fell for him as the bad guy. In 1993 he played a murderer in Baazigar and an obsessive lover in Darr, two box office hits released at a time when negative roles were considered risky for a leading man. Baazigar won him his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor, and a year later he won the Filmfare award for Best Performance in a Negative Role for Anjaam. Critic Arnab Ray later credited him with taking huge risks that built his career.

The Romantic Hero: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and After

Then came the role that reset the template. In 1995, Aditya Chopra’s directorial debut Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge cast him as a young NRI who falls in love with Kajol’s character on a trip across Europe. He was reluctant to play a lover, but the film made him the face of romance in Hindi cinema. It won ten Filmfare Awards, including his second for Best Actor, and has played for more than 1,000 weeks at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir.

Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) each won him Best Actor at Filmfare as well. Through Mohabbatein, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Kal Ho Naa Ho and Veer-Zaara, his partnerships with Yash Chopra, Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar shaped the image of a superstar, and according to author Anupama Chopra, they established him as an icon of romance in India.

Range: Devdas, Swades, Chak De! India and My Name Is Khan

The 2000s showed what else he could do. In Devdas (2002) he played the title role, in what was then the most expensive Bollywood film ever made, and won Best Actor at Filmfare. In 2004 he turned his production partnership into Red Chillies Entertainment, whose first film was Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na. Later that year, Swades cast him as a NASA scientist who returns to India, and it became the first Indian film shot inside the NASA research centre at the Kennedy Space Center. Critics including Jitesh Pillai considered it his finest acting to that point, and he won another Best Actor award.

Chak De! India (2007), in which he coached the Indian women’s hockey team, brought a fresh Best Actor award, and My Name Is Khan (2010), in which he played a man with Asperger syndrome, brought his eighth, equalling Dilip Kumar’s record in the category. A spinal injury in 2001 had led to surgery in London in 2003, after which he cut down the number of films he accepted each year.

The Slump and the Four-Year Break

The 2010s were harder. Chennai Express (2013) and Happy New Year (2014) were big hits, and Dilwale (2015) was profitable despite mixed reviews. Fan (2016) underperformed, and Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Zero (2018) were box office flops. After Zero he took a four-year break from full-time acting, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and used the time to attempt a comeback. He appeared in extended cameos in Brahmastra: Part One and Rocketry: The Nambi Effect in 2022.

Pathaan, Jawan and Dunki: The 2023 Comeback

In January 2023, Pathaan, a spy thriller set in the YRF Spy Universe, brought him back to the screen and broke several box office records. Jawan, directed by Atlee, in which he played father and son doppelgängers, broke Pathaan’s records. Both films grossed more than ₹1,000 crore worldwide, which made him the first Indian actor to have two films earn that much. His third release of the year, Rajkumar Hirani’s migration drama Dunki, earned more than ₹470 crore, a commercial success though short of the other two.

In August 2025, at the 71st National Film Awards, he won his first National Film Award, for Best Actor for Jawan, sharing the honour with Vikrant Massey of 12th Fail.

Beyond the Screen

Shah Rukh Khan has also been a television host, replacing Amitabh Bachchan for one season of Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2007 and later hosting TED Talks India Nayi Soch. In 2008, with Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta, he bought the Kolkata franchise of the IPL for US$75.09 million and named it Kolkata Knight Riders, who won the title in 2012, 2014 and 2024.

On 5 May 2025, he became the first Bollywood male actor to attend the Met Gala, in an outfit by Sabyasachi Mukherjee. A month later he appeared in the video for Ed Sheeran’s song Sapphire, which also featured vocals from Arijit Singh.

Major Work: The Films That Defined Shah Rukh Khan

Awards and Honours

• National Film Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, for Jawan (71st National Film Awards, 2025)
• 15 Filmfare Awards, including eight for Best Actor, a record he shares with Dilip Kumar
• Padma Shri (2005)
• Order of Arts and Letters (2007) and Legion of Honour (2014), both from the Government of France
• UNESCO’s Pyramide con Marni award (2011) and the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2018)
• Five honorary doctorates, from the University of Bedfordshire, the University of Edinburgh, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, the University of Law and La Trobe University

Full lists are on Wikipedia, under awards and nominations and filmography.

Latest Update: King, Tu Mil Jaaye and a 61st Birthday

King is the film everything else has been building toward. Siddharth Anand, who directed Pathaan, directs it, and it releases in cinemas on 24 December 2026. Gauri Khan, Mamta Anand and Siddharth Anand produce it under Red Chillies Entertainment and Marflix Pictures. The cast is crowded: Shah Rukh Khan, Suhana Khan in her theatrical debut, Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Anil Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Jaideep Ahlawat, Jackie Shroff, Raghav Juyal and Abhay Verma. Abhishek Bachchan is reportedly playing the main antagonist. For Shah Rukh and Padukone, it is their sixth film together, according to Gulf News.

The film has been teased in stages. Its title was revealed on his 60th birthday, November 2, 2025. A release-date video in April 2026 showed him silver-haired and bloodied, with the line Darr nahi, dehshat hoon.

Tu Mil Jaaye, released at midnight on 2 November 2026, is the film’s first song. Sachin-Jigar composed it, Kumaar wrote the Hindi lyrics, and Arijit Singh and Madhubanti Bagchi sing it, with an English rap section by Ed Sheeran, who wrote it himself, according to AltBollywood. Piyush-Shazia choreographed it. Music duties changed along the way: Anirudh Ravichander stepped away because of scheduling, though his theme runs through the score, and Sachin-Jigar handle most of the music, according to NewsBytes.

Fans praised the chemistry between Shah Rukh and Padukone, while others felt the visuals and action looked similar to Pathaan and Jawan, according to Eastern Eye. Every November 2, fans gather outside his Mumbai home, Mannat. This year the present came from him.

Time still has not won this one. Picture abhi baaki hai.

Last updated: November 2, 2026.

Social Media Stats

Figures are approximate, as of late October and 1 November 2026, and change often. His Instagram account follows only six accounts.

Who Is Shah Rukh Khan’s Wife, and How Many Children Does He Have?

Shah Rukh Khan’s wife is Gauri Khan, a film producer and his partner at Red Chillies Entertainment, and they have three children: Aryan, Suhana and AbRam. He married Gauri Chhibber in a traditional Hindu wedding on 25 October 1991, after a six-year courtship.

Aryan was born in 1997, Suhana in 2000 and AbRam in 2013. Aryan studied filmmaking at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and co-wrote and directed the Netflix series The Ba***ds of Bollywood. Suhana, who was an assistant director on Zero, studied drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and made her debut in Netflix’s The Archies. King is her first theatrical film, and her first with her father. His sister, Shahnaz, lives with the family in Mumbai.

Is Shah Rukh Khan a Billionaire?

Yes, by Hurun’s estimates, although no exact figure is independently verified. The Hurun India Rich List 2025 put his wealth at ₹12,490 crore, about US$1.4 billion, making him a billionaire for the first time. The Hurun India Rich List 2026, published in September, estimates it at ₹10,000 crore, a drop of about 20 per cent, though he remains India’s richest actor, according to Business Today. Earlier in 2026, the Hurun Global Rich List had put his wealth at ₹10,800 crore.

The base of that fortune is not acting fees. It is Red Chillies Entertainment and his stake in Kolkata Knight Riders, along with brand endorsements and real estate, which includes a London apartment and a villa on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai.

Frequently Asked Questions