Saif Ali Khan who was last seen in ‘Jewel Thief’ had a tough year but he’s bounced back and how! The actor has come out of a life-changing incident when he was attacked in January this year when an intruder entered his house. The actor recuperated after surgery and is now back to work. In a recent interview, Saif opened up on his early days in the industry and the struggles he’s seen. He also spoke about how people assumed he came from a privileged background being Sharmila Tagore and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi’s son and thus, it may have been easy for him when he joined the industry. But it wasn’t. Saif who made his debut in 1993, said during a chat with Esquire, “I probably did have it easy, but I mean of course I thought it was very hard for me.” He added, “We didn’t have the family background that empowered us to be a certain kind of movie star… our training was to be self-conscious, quiet, self-deprecating… not the larger-than-life persona that actors in the nineties were expected to have,” he says. “We were taught not to grab attention to ourselves.”He further recounted the time when he had financial responsibilities at a very early age because he was married to Amrita Singh at 21 and became a father at 25. Sara Ali Khan is his first child, after which he had his son Ibrahim. Recalling those days, the actor revealed that he was paid Rs 1000 per week by a producer who demanded that he should kiss her on the cheek ten times, every time she handed him the money. Saif recalled how he was only playing second and third lead in some of his early movies. “People would say, you’re lucky you’ve got so many chances. But it wasn’t that I was getting the best movies in town and being cast as the main lead. I’d done second lead, third lead… There were a couple of films that were decent, that kept one afloat. But then there came a time when, you know, one after another, they were very bad.” From then to now, the actor has come a long way and the shift began for him with films like ‘Dil Chahta Hai’, ‘Hum Tum’, ‘Omkara’ and more. Saif has just finished shooting for his next film co-starring Akshay Kumar, directed by Priyadarshan.
