Fawad Afzal Khan

Khan was born on 29 November 1981 in Karachi, Sindh. He was born to a family of Pashtun background. His father was born in Patiala (present-day Punjab, India) whereas his mother's family was native of Lucknow (present-day Uttar Pradesh, India), who moved to Pakistan after the 1947 partition of British India. When Khan was young, his father was in pharmaceutical sales, which required the family to live in Athens, Dubai, Riyadh and Manchester during the Gulf War. His family moved to Lahore, Punjab when he was 13. He has two sisters; his older sister, Aliya, is an architect and his younger sister, Sana, is a physician. He currently lives in Lahore. He is a recovering alcoholic. Khan studied at an American school, where he said he faced racial issues and was bullied because of his shy, calm, non-combative nature. Khan passed his A-levels at the Lahore Grammar School, Johar Town (LGS JT), and received a bachelor's degree in software engineering from the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES) in Lahore. Because he could not find a job as a programmer, he soon began acting. In a Forbes India interview, Khan said that he had also failed to find a job in marketing. By then he could play guitar, bass and drums, and became Entity Paradigm's lead singer. Khan's first amateur performance was in the title role of a play, Spartacus. Two rock bands, Ahmed Ali Butt's Entity and Khan's Paradigm, were active in Lahore between 1994 and 2000. The bands collaborated on the title track of a television sitcom, Jutt and Bond (featuring Khan and Ahmed Ali Butt), in the early 2000s. This collaboration led to the bands' merger into Entity Paradigm. The new band appeared in the 2002 finale of Pepsi Battle of the Bands, losing to the band Aaroh. Entity Paradigm's debut album, Irtiqa, was released in October 2003; it received broad critical appreciation, particularly the popular romantic track "Rahguzar". The band broke up in 2007, reuniting in 2010 to participate in the third season of Coke Studio (where they covered Sajjad Ali's "Bolo Bolo"). Their single, "Shor Macha", was released that year. Dawn listed it among the year's most popular Pakistani songs in the newspaper's online poll. Khan was featured in its video (directed by Bilal Lashari), and said that he had played almost 250 shows as a musician. He left the band in 2012 to focus on his acting career. Khan appeared as a judge on Pepsi Battle of the Bands in July 2017, with Atif Aslam and Meesha Shafi. He sang the show's introductory song, and appeared in its video (released on 23 July) with Aslam and Shafi. According to Vafa Batool of Pakistan Today, Khan "preferred to acknowledge the raw live energy on stage." Khan and the other members of Entity Paradigm reunited and performed "Hamesha" in the show's finale.