Last year this day I was with Salman Khan on the sets of Tubelight at Film City in Mumbai. It was late at night. Kabir Khan had announced pack up and the unit was wishing one another “Happy Holidays” before they broke up for the festive season. I had gone to interview Salman. It was his 51^st birthday on December 27. But we were discussing Aamir Khan. The actor, who was nudging 52 himself, had his Christmas release Dangal coming out the next day in which he played the aging, grizzled and paunchy former wrestling great Mahavir Singh Phogat who produced four champion wrestler daughters. I hadn’t yet seen Dangal. But film critics and Bollywood celebs who were invited to a special screening that evening by Aamir were already heaping praise on the film. Among them were Salman’s parents. They texted Salman after the show. He laughed when he read their message and showed it to me. His parents thought Dangal was better than Salman’s Sultan that released in July and became a super hit. Right before my eyes, the large-hearted Salman generously tweeted their opinion for Aamir and added, “Love you personally but hate you professionally”.

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I was impressed. By both, Aamir and Salman. The thing is Salman also played a middle-aged wrestling champion in Sultan, but the film belonged entirely to him. It was his show fro the first frame to last. Whereas Aamir, who had not had a release since PK in December 2014, neglected his immense superstar selling power and took a backseat in Dangal. He introduced newbies Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanaya Malhotra instead who went on to become the real heroes. Then what happened is Indian cinematic history. Dangal became a record-breaking and award-sweeping global success. It became the highest-grossing film in India and had an exceptional theatrical run in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, UAE, Taiwan and other countries. And in China, where Indian films are seldom released, it was the biggest earning non-Hollywood film of all time, making more money in the People’s Republic than what the film got in India and the US combined. “Each time Dangal released in a new country, I got a lot of happiness and felt a spurt of excitement,” Aamir told me. “It connects with people everywhere. The language is not a barrier, the foreign audiences laugh at the jokes, they enjoy the drama, I’ve followed the reviews, and the critics said that the film is inspirational, girls go for it, parents are drawn closer to their kids.”

Before the dust of the worldwide box office success of Dangal settled, Aamir was into Secret Superstar. He’s always been a one film in a year or two years actor. He once told me, “I could do more, of course, in my lifetime I could do 500 films. But when I’m doing a film all my energies are into it. At that point, I don’t enjoy taking on anything else. I enjoy the space I’m in. I’m not a factory or a huge production system. I’m... kya bolta hai... a handloom product. A one-machine-one-shirt kind of actor. I’m not a large-scale outfit producing a million shirts.” Which is true. I have known Aamir closely for years. And I have always marveled at how he gets into the skin of each screen character physically. He uses his body as a tool. Remember that awe-inspiring, street-fighter’s look of Ghajini in Christmas 2008? Aamir told me it took 13 months of painful workouts and strict dieting to sculpt that body. And he created it for just one small scene of raw action. From there to the young, fresh-faced, lean and ripped look of the alien lost on earth in PK in 2014. And then Dangal, where at 51 it must have broken his heart to give up that chiseled body that was the envy of younger actors in Bollywood and put on oodles of weight. But he didn’t give his audiences time to get used to that fat at 50 avatar of himself as Mahavir Singh Phogat with the grey stubble and salt-and-pepper hair because months later Aamir bounced back in a small but powerful role in Secret Superstar, blazing a mercurial trail across cinema screens and leaving audiences gasping for more. He was outrageously roguish, playfully mischievous, sometimes a rascal, other times a rescuer, but utterly and lovably chaalu in this film. He lit up the screen with palpable excitement in seconds and had fans breathlessly wondering whether this was his best performance ever.

The thing that impressed most about Secret Superstar was that it was another Aamir film in which the actor was not the lead character. It was Zaira Wasim this time. His 16-year-old Dangal discovery from Kashmir, who becomes a secret superstar on YouTube by hiding from her conservative Muslim father behind a burkha and expressing the angst, ambition, and rebellion of youth in powerfully emotional songs delivered by another Aamir teenage discovery, 16-year-old Meghna Mishra from Mumbai. I don’t know how Aamir does this. But he’s always backed newcomers. And in his biggest productions, he’s got the courage of his convictions to take a backseat and leave the stage and limelight to debutants. I admire this generosity of his. “But I’m not taking a backseat,” Aamir protested. “I’m taking my seat. For me, that’s the role I play. My character in Secret Superstar is very important but if I tilt the film towards him, if I let my stardom get in the way, then I’ll harm the film. And my courage of conviction lies in my love for the script. It’s so great that I want to do it. I follow my creative instincts.” He showed that kind of unprecedented faith in a debutant director when his manager Advait Chandan came up with the story for Secret Superstar. Aamir didn’t think he would be able to pull off the character of Shakti Kumar, the badly behaved music composer with a declining career, so he did a screen test for the role. I know this was only the second time that Aamir was doing a screen test. The first was for wife Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat in 2011 because Aamir felt he had to convince her he was perfect for the lead role. He did a test shoot for Raju Hirani’s PK in 2014 but that was for himself – to see if he could get the alien’s character right. Then Aamir put Advait to the test. “When I work with a new director I select six scenes from the script and ask him to shoot, edit and cut them, add some temporary music, and show it to me,” he said. “They tell me how much control he has as a director. And if he’s hitting the right note. After I green light him, I trust the director completely, and I come on board as a producer only after that.”

He’s working on Thugs of Hindostan now, his period action-adventure with Amitabh Bachchan, Katrina Kaif, and Fatima Sana Shaikh, which is slated for release in Diwali next year. Apart from that, Aamir has no films on hand. He backed out of Siddharth Roy Kapur’s Salute, the proposed biopic on cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma who was the first Indian to go into space because he reportedly has plans to get into what is being described as his dream project. This will be either the Mahabharata or a sci-fi series done of the scale of Hollywood’s epic space films series Star Wars, with sequels made over ten years. It’s more likely to be Mahabharata. Only Aamir fears it will consume at least 15-20 years of his life. At 52, can he afford that? I think he’s at an age of contemplation. Like a batsman at the crease who’s just crossed a half-century and acknowledged the applause, he’s carefully studying the field and taking guard for the rest of his innings. Is he doing the math? Figuring out how many years of meaningful cinema he’s got left in him, because Bollywood is an unforgiving industry, and an actor’s only as good as the last hit he’s delivered. I don’t think so. “I’m not in the numbers game, I don’t think filmmaking is a race, it’s an art form, an emotional connect with work,” Aamir once explained to me. “Everybody has their own priorities. I won’t say I’m not bothered with how the rest of the industry works — but it doesn’t interest me who’s No. 1, who’s making how much money, I’m more concerned with what makes me happy. My thrill lies in breaking barriers, in doing unusual stuff, I lead with my heart. If I like a story, I do it. Yes, I take risks, but I’m not calculating — that’s how I’ve always been. I work with newcomers, I like experimental filmmakers, my power — yes, you can say that, lies in bringing about change. My popularity, the faith that the market and my colleagues have in me, the love, support and respect of audiences, these help me to do things that are challenging and which excite me. They encourage me to go into areas as an actor that I haven’t been before. But I want to take my work to another level not seen before. I have no long-term dreams for myself. When I pick up a story, I want to achieve it to its full potential. I live for the moment and in the moment I’m in.”

There’s no doubt he’s a phenomenal actor and also a maverick creative genius at filmmaking. I once asked him what job he enjoyed most and whether after Dangal and Secret Superstar he would continue the ongoing Bollywood trend practiced also by Akshay Kumar to produce content-driven films that contain social messages. “I am an entertainer,” Aamir said forcefully, “and when a person comes to the theatre he wants to be entertained. If he wants a lecture in sociology, he will go to college. All my films don’t have messages. Dhoom 3 didn’t and nor did Delhi Belly. I set out to entertain but also tell audiences something important naturally. Films get me charged. I’m consumed by great scripts. The effort to bring on screen what is in the script is a huge challenge. I like picking up an unusual script and making it mainstream cinema. Then I’m anxious to see how people react. That’s why I do only one film a year.” In 2018, that film will be Thugs of Hindostan in which Aamir will be sort of killing two birds with one stone. His wish to work with Amitabh Bachchan; and, to get back to doing action. “All my years, I’ve been waiting to work with Mr. Bachchan,” he admitted, “but somehow it didn’t happen organically. This was my big chance. He has so much passion for his craft, and he’s such an exceptional actor, I watch and learn from him. In Thugs of Hindostan you will see the old Amitabh Bachchan because this is an action film and that’s his forte. I love action too but since Ghajini in 2008 none of my films required me to be in action. Dhoom 3 came later. That was in 2013 and it wasn’t action but bike stunts and car chases. My character in Thugs of Hindostan doesn’t require me to be big and ripped. I’m toned down and reduced. I’m a thug. A friend who will stab you in the back, pull the carpet from beneath your feet, an unreliable character.” But he’s also Bollywood’s real superstar who produces magic at the box office. He’s been doing it since Taare Zameen Par in 2007 – ten years ago, another Aamir Khan box office hit in which he introduced newcomers and appeared on screen himself only after the interval. Only a creative genius would be crazy enough to take that kind of risk in Bollywood.