Shah Rukh Khan recently played host to Brad Pitt, who had come to Mumbai for the promotion of his upcoming film. Shah Rukh Khan and Brad Pitt indulged in an hour-long chat that covered various aspects of cinema. While Brad was not so forthcoming with his replies, King Khan charmed all with his instant replies.
The hour-long conversation revolved around films and was moderated by a leading movie critic. While Brad Pitt spoke about his future as a producer, Shah Rukh had some interesting anecdotes to share.
When quizzed how did SRK not turn out to be a self-obsessed movie star, the actor replied, "I think a certain amount of self-absorption is necessary for any creative person to be. You are not a machine that you will be following what people think should be doing. You have to have free thinking. A little bit of self-absorption... it is required to be individualistic but beyond that no."
However, the actor did admit that he had encountered a few self- obsessed people during the course of his career. "It's a cliche that movie stars are self-obsessed... I think an actor is a person who loves himself the least, but yes as a star you need to love yourself. Brad and I, we love ourselves because we are stars and good actors," the actor revealed.
Talking about the need for Bollywood to reinvent itself, Shah Rukh said, "If we don't adapt ourselves in terms of marketing, visual effects, script writing and professionalism, we will be overtaken. If we do not learn from Hollywood, there is a real fear of being overtaken. The language barrier is no longer there. Spider-Man does as well as a Hindi film, so we need to adapt. If we don't do that, we'll have an issue over the next 20 years."
Signing off Shah Rukh said, "We have such wonderful stories to tell but we aren't telling them well enough. We treat our stories like fads. Singing and dancing have to be a part of Bollywood movies if only to keep Brad away from our movies. But we should learn from Hollywood."
