- Last updated: August 3, 2025 | 10:40
India’s National Film Awards have lost their sheen in recent years but when Shah Rukh Khan, often called the Badshah of Bollywood, is adjudged the best actor by a jury presided over by his Swades director Ashutosh Gowariker, can his fans stay calm? Not a chance in hell because the recognition has not come a day too soon.
The long overdue honour for SRK, one of India’s most popular movie actors with a fan following that straddles the globe, has come after several snubs and near-misses in the past. He has won the award this year for a double role in Atlee’s Jawan, one of the highest grossing films ever in the history of Indian cinema.
The film cast him as a lookalike pair of father and son who take on a world where evil is rife. The principal role was that of Azad, a women’s prison jailer who becomes a vigilante against corruption and assembles a team of inmates to wage war on those responsible for duping the nation.
The same year saw Shah Rukh Khan make a comeback (after a long hiatus) to the big screen with Pathaan, a high-voltage espionage thriller that, like Jawan, vindicated that he is still a box-office dynamite. The super-success of Pathaan and Jawan, both of which saw the actor don the persona of an action-hero, ended a lull in his career. Films like Fan (2016), Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Zero (2018) underperformed. Shah Rukh took a break before returning with a massive bang.
Although he has won the national award for an action-oriented role of an anti-corruption and pro-social harmony crusader, the star’s biggest contribution to Hindi cinema has been his steadfast adherence to a gentle, romantic, non-macho code that has earned him phenomenal adulation from female fans of Hindi cinema.
Consider the handful of other roles for which he should have won the National Award and it will be easy to see that no Bollywood A-lister has done as much as Shah Rukh Khan to yank Hindi popular cinema away from the industry’s obsession with abrasive, vengeful, often toxic, masculinity. He brought gentility and poise to Bollywood movies.
In 2004, he starred in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades as NASA engineer Mohan Bhargav who returns to his homeland with the intention of making a difference to the lives of people.
It was a restrained but intense performance that revealed a facet of the actor’s personality that had hitherto not come to the fore because of the conventionally romantic aura around him. The National Award for Best Actor eluded him. It somewhat bafflingly went to Saif Ali Khan for the romantic drama Hum Tum.
The very next year, Shah Rukh Khan played the male lead in the offbeat Paheli, directed by Amol Palekar who adapted the film from a Rajasthani story by Vijayadan Detha.
Paheli, co-starring Rani Mukherji as a village woman whose husband goes away for work and is visited by a ghost disguised as her husband, travelled to international film festivals but sank at the box office.
While the lead actor’s performance drew positive critical notices, Paheli drew a blank at the National Awards but for a prize for Shreya Ghoshal in the Best Female Playback Singer category.
In 2007, Shah Rukh was once again a frontrunner for the award. He played Kabir Khan, a disgraced hockey coach who makes a comeback to groom the Indian women’s team into a fighting fit unit, in Chak De! India, produced by Aditya Chopra and directed by Shimit Amin.
Chak de! India marked another career peak for the superstar. He delivered a performance of enormous power that was tempered with measured strokes. Like he had done in Swades, he broke away from his romantic hero moorings and fleshed out a relatable man steeped in reality.
While the film itself bagged the National Award for the “best film providing wholesome entertainment”, the lead actor was overlooked by a jury headed by filmmaker Sai Paranjpye. The Best Actor National Award that year went (and not undeservedly) to Prakash Raj for Priyadarshan’s Tamil-language film Kanchivaram.
Karan Johar’s 2010 film, My Name is Khan, had Shahrukh Khan in the role of Rizwan Khan, a man with Asperger’s Syndrome. The actor excelled and delivered a moving performance that still ranks among his best.
He was tipped to take home the elusive Best Actor Prize at the National Awards but was beaten to it by none other than Amitabh Bachchan, who won for Paa, in which he played a child with progeria.
The long wait has finally ended. Shah Rukh debuted over three decades ago in Deewana. By the time the 1990s ended, he was already Bollywood’s biggest star, a man who could do no wrong. In 1992, the year of his debut, he also had the much-loved Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman. The following year, he was the star of Abbas-Mustan’s Baazigar and Yash Chopra’s Darr. There was no looking back from there on for the actor.
Shah Rukh Khan went on to feature within the next few years in such runaway hits as Karan Arjun, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Pardes and Dil To Pagal Hai.
Given the enormity of his popularity and his status as the brightest luminary of contemporary Hindi cinema, the Best Actor National Award, even if it is only the icing on an already puffy cake, is vindication of his enduring power as an entertainer.