Imran Khan says he was ‘barely capable of functioning’ when he was ‘tackling deep and severe depression’: ‘Did my best to disappear’

When asked where he’d disappeared for all these years, Imran said that he “removed” himself from the trappings of the film industry because he was “not able to engage with any part of it.” He added that it was not that difficult to walk away from the glamorous and seductive life of the movies because he wasn’t enamoured by it in the first place.

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“The week before Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na released, nobody could have given a damn if I walked on the street; the week after it released, suddenly there are people chasing my car,” he said and added, “A film doesn’t do well, the same industry people who were chomping at the bit to show up and pat me on the back suddenly are like, ‘You are out of season, you are the wrong kind of flavour’.”

Imran opened up about this phase in his life, and said that when he stepped away, he missed the movies but he was primarily spending his time nursing himself back to health. “In those years, I was just not capable of doing these things. I was barely capable of functioning. When you are tackling deep and severe depression, just getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth and taking a shower is a monumental task,” he said, and mentioned that making it to his regular therapy appointments was a task in itself.

Imran said that he has never tried to cling on to the fame he had, in fact, he tried his best to disappear. “I did my best to disappear. I did not engage via those threads. You know how desperately people cling on to the spotlight, I didn’t. I did exactly the opposite of what you are supposed to do to stay relevant. Yet here we are, and here I am,” he said.