On the sidelines of Tiger 3’s release, Salman Khan spoke about being misunderstood as arrogant, addressed his career lows, and why he and YRF never collaborated on films before Ek Tha Tiger in 2012.

Salman Khan calls himself an average Bandra boy. (Photo: Salman Khan/ Instagram)

Salman Khan is basking in the success of his latest YRF venture, the third installment of Tiger franchise, Tiger 3, with Katrina Kaif. The actor, who is seen as one of the biggest superstars in the country, said that he rejects such terms, and urged others to stop using them for him.

In a group interview, Salman told indianexpress.com that while he doesn’t consider himself a superstar, it is his walk that often gives a wrong impression. He said, “Whoever is a superstar in his mind is a superstar. I don’t think of that at all, so I am not. People like to be called superstars and megastars, that’s something that I don’t like.”

“My arrogant walk makes people feel I am a superstar”

“Stardom doesn’t show in the way I am, but I am sure it shows in my walk. My walk is considered to be an arrogant walk but that’s the way I walk and I cannot change that walk, and I am comfortable in that walk and I am comfortable in my skin. Sometimes it comes out in a way that ‘yeh dekho, inki chaal dekho, kya samajhte hai? (Look at him, his walk, what does he think of himself)?’ But I’ve been walking like that from childhood. Now if I walk like someone else then it won’t suit me. So, now this is who I am, what I do. But yes, I don’t believe in this superstardom, and I have not done anything that I can take the credit of superstardom. Everyone, from our DOP (director of photography) to the scriptwriter to the director help this normal average Bandra boy look heroic on screen. That credit, I don’t like taking alone at all.”

Salman then addressed the lull that he faced in his career over the last few years when his films Antim and Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan failed. He said, “The lows that you are talking about, the lows that I have been through, maybe the highest point of 99.9% of the country. So that low also, if I say that it was a low point for me then fans will say ‘yeh low hai toh hamara kya hai?’(If these are your lows then what about ours?) So I don’t consider that low also as a low.”

Despite that, he said, he takes full responsibility for his flops. He said, “You need to keep working harder and every year that goes by you need to work twice as hard, because you are growing older as well. You need to keep competing with yourself, you are anyway competing with your juniors and seniors but it is very important to compete with yourself.”

Not doing YRF film for 21 years

Salman then spoke about how and why Ek Tha Tiger was his first venture with YRF after 21 years. When asked if it was worth the wait, he said, “So, you need to ask Adi (YRF head honcho Aditya Chopra) this question. It is not that I did not do a YRF film for the longest time, Adi did not do a Salman Khan film for the longest time. That is the question that I don’t answer, he answers that. But was it worth the wait? It was worth the wait for Adi as well.”