Aamir Khan was born in a film family; his uncle, director Nasir Hussain, was one of the most popular personalities of his generation, and his father, producer Tahir Hussain, was successful in his own right. But when Aamir was growing up, his family went through a tough time as his father had taken a fair amount of loans, which he wasn’t able to repay. Aamir recalled in a recent interview that his father was “almost bankrupt” when he was dealing with all of this.
He shared with Zoom, “My father didn’t know how to make money. He was a film producer, and even though his films did well, he wasn’t a very good business man. Even if his film did well, he didn’t make money.” Tahir had produced films like Caravan and Anamika. Aamir recalled that for about eight years, his family went through rather tough times because of these financial problems.
“Growing up, we saw a very difficult time of 6-8 years. My father was in a lot of financial troubles and he had borrowed a lot of money. Actors were not giving him any dates to shoot so he was stuck. He couldn’t finish the film until he got more money, and the people he had borrowed money from, they were asking for their money back. He would tell the creditors, ‘I don’t have money right now, I will only get it when the film releases, and I will pay it back then. So let me get to a stage where I can release the film’,” he recalled.
Aamir said that during this time, his father was “almost bankrupt.” He shared that, as kids, if he or any of his siblings ever answered the phone when a creditor called, they would be yelled at. “We were little then, and if we ever took phone calls, and if there was creditor on the other side, they would yell at us. They would say, ‘Tell your father that he has not paid us our money.’ So we have heard all of this growing up. That was a very difficult period because the entire family was affected by it,” he said. Aamir said that it was assumed that his family was wealthy because of its film connections, but that wasn’t the case.
Aamir is currently looking forward to his next release Sitaare Zameen Par.
