Aamir Khan on his student days and being an ‘idiot’ in his next film

Aamir Khan keeps going back to school. He played the truant college boy in Rang De Basanti and the school teacher in Tare Zameen Par, now the 44-year-old Khan morphs into a goofy engineering student in Rajkumar Hirani’s Three Idiots, which hits the screen on December 25.

He teams up with RDB co-stars Madhavan and Sharman Joshi in the new venture. “Since we have worked on an earlier project we get along spontaneously on screen and know what the other person is thinking,” says Khan, sporting his college student look as part of the promotion exercise for his film in Delhi. Madhavan and Joshi, also dressed like their on-screen characters, however, kept a low profile and left the spotlight free for Khan.

Khan plays a boy in his twenties, an irony that wasn’t lost on the actor. “I am playing someone less than half my age. Unfortunately, I missed out on college life as I was thrust into work soon after Class XII. But when I went to IIM Bangalore to shoot this film, I interacted with the students and gota taste of college life,” says Khan.

Three Idiots, loosely based on Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, is a coming-of-age story of three friends — Rancho (Khan), Farhan Qureshi (Madhavan) and Raju (Joshi). “We have defined ‘idiots’ as someone who follows his heart and does not conform with society’s norms. People think he is wrong but he actually turns out to be more successful than his peers,” explains Khan. The character of the unconventional boy is close to Khan’s heart. “I have defied stereotypes all my life. I was written off when I entered the industry but I followed my heart to get where I am,” he adds.

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