Actor Jibraan Khan might have had a successful stint as a child actor in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, but he had to toil much like everyone else to land his first Bollywood debut, which released recently. The fact that he is the son of veteran actor Firoz Khan, also didn’t mean much to him, as he underwent the process of contacting filmmakers and asking for work.
Khan, 30, shares that his journey has been different from other star kids and that he doesn’t belong to ‘that world’. Talking about not having an easy launch, he says, “If that would be the case then I would have been launched a couple of years ago. K3G is going to finish 25 years in the next two years, it’s been a really long time. I just feel that there are a lot of parts of the industry. I belong to a part where I don’t have that kind of connection.”
The actor, who has learnt theatre, Kathak and underwent intense body-building training, did get film offers in the last five to seven years but didn’t feel like the right part.
“My father has been an actor in the 1980s and 1990s. The relevancy also matters. I am not saying that he cannot take me to the biggest parties and stars of our country and say that ‘please do something for my son’, but he also needed to feel that back in the day, I needed to be that prepared. I could not be that please take me to Shah Rukh Khan and tell them that my son wants to be launched,” says the actor.
In fact, he did once ask his father once. “I remember that, this incident had happened once where I was a frustrated 20 year old and then I told him, take me somewhere, you have worked with all the big names, people know you, you are respected and relevant, so what’s the matter. He said, Jibraan you tell me, I will take you and they turn around and say ‘Firoz Bhai he doesn’t look like an actor. How would that feel?’ and I think that was a very big turning point in my life,” he shares.
The debutant is thrilled with entering films as a lead actor but he doesn’t want to wash away the recognition that came his way after his played Shah Rukh Khan’s son in Kabhi Khushi Kabhii Gham.
“Till date I am known as Krish Raichand. It is part of my identity and there were times in my life where I used to think that I really need to break out from this, people only put me in that category. But over the years I started looking at it like a positive because I questioned myself that why am I running away from an identity that is only giving me love. There was a time when I started believing in this character as a blessing. Even today, wherever I go in the world, people know K3G as a big Indian celebration. That K3G boy has now evolved into Sahir but Krish is going to be my identity till I am on this planet,” he wraps up.
