Reflecting upon the failure of his last film ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’, Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan says he goes into “depression” when his movies do not perform well at the box office.
“When my films fail, I get depressed. I get emotional and I cry a lot for two to three weeks. Later, I sit with my team and think about what went wrong with the film, we try to understand what the audience said about the film, so that we don’t repeat our mistakes. I value my failures,” the actor said.
He was speaking at a session “60 and Not Done - The Screen and Spotlight”. He added that failures push him to do better work.
"Once I’ve been through that process, then I look forward to working on my upcoming films with enthusiasm. One should take positive things from their failures, it teaches you to be better at work,” said Khan, whose last two releases “Laal Singh Chaddha” and “Thugs of Hindostan” performed abysmally at the box office.
Speaking about the failure of the two movies, the actor said he is disappointed that he couldn't deliver praiseworthy performances, especially in “Laal Singh Chaddha”, which was a remake of Tom Hanks’ “Forrest Gump”.
“I felt very bad. We didn’t earn money. I’m an emotional person. I felt ‘Thugs…’ was a weak film, we couldn’t make what we wanted to. Filmmaking is a difficult film and sometimes we are not able to make films the way we want to.”
"In ‘Laal Singh Chadha’, I feel my performance was too high, Tom Hanks did such great work in the original he takes you on a ride, I was not able to do so.” Khan said.
He credited his family for their unwavering support during tough professional times.
"When ‘Laal Singh Chadha’ didn’t do well, my family knew I was very much involved with the film, so they were all there with me. Sometimes Junaid, Ira, Kiran, and mother or someone or the other, would come to show their support,” Khan added.
The actor also expressed pride in the success his films attained in China, particularly the 2009 comedy-drama “3 Idiots”.
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The Rajkumar Hirani-directed feature, also starring R Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Boman Irani, revolved around the story of three college friends and weaved in a message about pursuing one's passion and defying social conventions.
“The success of my films in China shows that cinema crosses national barriers, it is the victory of the Chinese audience. ‘3 Idiots’ went viral in China because of piracy, I became a star in China because of piracy. We were happy that our film was doing well in India,” Khan, who will turn 60 next month, said.
“Six to eight months later we got to know that the film did well in China, and we were like, ‘We haven’t released the film in China, so how come people saw it?’, we learnt they watched a pirated version of it," he added.
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