Aamir Khan got 400 offers after QSQT’s success, cried at home every day after his films started flopping: ‘I was a one-hit wonder’

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“I had worked only with Mansoor Khan and Nasir Hussain as an assistant till then. But once my first film succeeded, I started getting a lot of offers. To be honest, I got about 300-400 film offers. Producers were coming to meet me from various places. Since I was a newcomer, I didn’t realise that signing even one film was a huge responsibility. I had no idea,” he said during a recent conversation with legendary screenwriter-lyricist Javed Akhtar at the launch of Aamir Khan: Cinema Ka Jadugar, a special film festival by PVR INOX. While producer-director Nasir Hussain was Aamir’s uncle, Mansoor was Nasir’s son and directed films such as QSQT, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Akele Hum Akele Tum and Josh.

“Back then, actors worked on 30 to 50 films simultaneously. Interestingly, Anil Kapoor did the fewest, with 33 films. Seeing that, I ended up signing 9-10 films at once. However, none of the directors I had dreamed of working with offered me any roles. It was only once the shooting of these films began that I realised the gravity of my mistake. I was working three shifts a day. I was not happy. I would go home and cry,” he added. Reflecting on this challenging period, Aamir admitted that it left him deeply disturbed but also taught him valuable lessons, particularly that a good script alone wasn’t enough. The director, producer and their convictions mattered just as much.

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Recalling how his subsequent films such as Love Love Love, Awwal Number and Tum Mere Ho, flopped at the box office, Aamir shared that his career nearly hit rock bottom. “The media dubbed me a ‘one-film wonder.’ Rightly so; I blame no one for that label. By then, I was certain that not only had these three films failed, but my next six would be disasters because they were even worse. I could see my career going down the drain. I was stuck in a swamp, unable to get out.”

However, the blockbuster success of Indra Kumar’s Dil, in which he starred alongside Madhuri Dixit, revived Aamir’s career and put him back on the path to stardom.