Aamir Khan

Mohammed Aamir Hussain Khan was born on 14 March 1965 in Bombay to Tahir Hussain, a film producer, and Zeenat Hussain. He is the second of four siblings; he has a younger brother—Faisal Khan—and two sisters, Farhat and Nikhat Khan. His family has roots from Herat in Afghanistan; Khan's paternal grandfather was a schoolteacher from a Pashtun zamindar background while his paternal grandmother was an Arab tracing her roots to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and a niece of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Khan has expressed his wish to make a movie about Maulana Azad. Najma Heptulla, the 16th Governor of Manipur and the grand-niece of Maulana Azad, is Khan's cousin. Several of his relatives were members of the Hindi film industry, including his late paternal uncle, producer-director Nasir Hussain. Nasir's son Mansoor Khan is a director who has cast Aamir in most of his movies while Nasir's grandson through his daughter, Imran Khan, is a former Hindi film actor. Through his mother, Khan is a nephew of the Fazli brothers, who have been filmmakers in both India and Pakistan. As a child actor, he appeared on screen in two minor roles. At the age of eight, he appeared in Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973), which was the first masala film in Bollywood. The following year, he portrayed the younger version of Mahendra Sandhu's character in Madhosh. Khan attended J.B. Petit School for his pre-primary education, later switching to St. Anne's High School, Bandra, until the eighth grade, and completed his ninth and tenth grades at Bombay Scottish School, Mahim. He played tennis in state level championships and became a state-level champion. He professed he was "much more into sports than studies". He completed his twelfth grade at Mumbai's Narsee Monjee College, and described his childhood as "tough" due to the financial problems his father had, as his film productions were mostly unsuccessful. He said, "There would be at least 30 calls a day from creditors calling for their money," and that he was always at risk of being expelled from school for non-payment of fees. At the age of sixteen, Khan got involved in the experimental process of making a 40-minute silent film, Paranoia, which was directed by his school friend Aditya Bhattacharya. The film was funded by filmmaker Shriram Lagoo, an acquaintance of Bhattacharya, who provided them with a few thousand rupees. His parents did not want him to make films and wished that he would instead pursue a "steady" career as an engineer or doctor; for that reason, the shooting schedule of Paranoia was kept secret. In the film, he played the lead role alongside actors Neena Gupta and Victor Banerjee while simultaneously assisting Bhattacharya. He said that the experience encouraged him to pursue a career in film. Khan subsequently joined a theatre group called Avantar, where he worked backstage for over a year. He made his stage debut with a small role in the company's Gujarati play, Kesar Bina, at Prithvi Theatre. He went on to act in two of their Hindi plays, and one English play, which was titled Clearing House. After completing high school, Khan decided to discontinue studying, and work instead as an assistant director to Hussain on the Hindi films Manzil Manzil and Zabardast. In 2007, he lost a custody battle for his younger brother Faisal to their father, Tahir Hussain, who died on 2 February 2010. As a practising Muslim, he along with his mother Zeenat, performed Hajj, an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and a mandatory religious duty for Muslims, in 2013.