After years of reliance on cigarettes, Bollywood megastar Aamir Khan announced that he has quit smoking. He revealed this news at the trailer launch event of his son Junaid Khan’s film Loveyapa in Mumbai, as per The Hindu.
“I have given up smoking. Smoking is something I love very much and it’s something I enjoy,” he confessed. “What can I say? It’s the truth. I can’t lie about it. I’d been puffing cigarettes for many years. Tobacco is something I enjoy, though it’s not good for health. No one should do it.”
Further advocating against this, he added, “I am very happy to say that I have quit this bad habit. And since a lot of people are listening and watching, I would also like to tell them, please quit this. It’s not a good habit. It shouldn’t be done.”
Aamir also revealed that his decision to battle the addiction at this time is a conscious one, considering that his son is looking to establish himself in the entertainment industry. “My son’s film is about to come. I felt it was the right moment to quit, so I vowed not to smoke. Whether it works or not, as a father, I wanted to make this sacrifice,” the Taare Zameen Par actor candidly shared.
This sharp change in the Indian actor’s life comes after a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter where he contemplated the remaining span of his career. “I have never taken up six movies together in my life. This time, I had my own reason for it. When I finally decided, ‘Okay, I won’t leave films yet’, the next thought that came to me was that these are probably the last 10 years of my active working life,” he shared.
Aamir cited the uncertainty of life and death as he grappled with the possibility of resigning a decade from now. “I am 59. Till I am 70, I will hopefully be well enough to be productive. So, then I thought, let me make my last 10 years the most productive. More than that, as I am getting older, I want to support talent which I believe inwriters, directors, all creative people. I want to become a platform for talents I believe in before I retire at 70. That’s why I took up more films,” he justified.
Previously, Aamir backed Oscar-selected feature Laapataa Ladies. “The film really spoke to me, and I felt that here is a film that not only has a great script that pops really well but talks about such an important issue,” he told BBC.
Unfurling in a rural setting, the film follows the mind-boggling journey of two young brides whose fates get swapped due to an unfortunate switch on a train. Despite being comedic in its intent, Laapataa Ladies does well to explore female independence through the realisation of the characters’ dreams and proves through its presentation why it caught the attention of the Oscar jury. It is helmed by Kiran Rao.
“Women all over the world have been subjected to a lot of challenges in their lives, not just in India,” Aamir acknowledged. “So I felt that here’s a story that brings it out really well and in such a nice way, which is why I wanted to produce it and I was keen on Kiran directing it.”
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