Salman Khan
Salman Khan is an actor, born 1965.
Khan has been a fixture of Hindi cinema since Maine Pyar Kiya in 1989, and the credits are a good map of how that actually works. Count the characters called Prem: Prem Choudhary in Maine Pyar Kiya, Prem in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, Prem Bhopali in Andaz Apna Apna, Prem Mehra in Biwi No.1, Prem Chaturvedi in Hum Saath Saath Hain, Prem the Love Guru in Partner, Prem Kapoor in Ready, Prem Dilwale in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. The name stopped being a character and became a genre.
The 1990s Khan is the romantic lead of enormous family musicals, and his sharpest comic work comes from that stretch, with Andaz Apna Apna still the film his fans quote at each other. Then Wanted in 2009 and Dabangg in 2010 rebuilt him as an action star in his forties, and Chulbul Pandey, the swaggering cop of the Dabangg films, became the template that Bodyguard, Kick, Jai Ho and Radhe all run on.
Franchise continuity is the other half of the business. He has played Avinash Singh Rathore, codename Tiger, through Ek Tha Tiger, Tiger Zinda Hai and Tiger 3, and appears as him in Pathaan, which is how the Hindi spy universe got assembled around him.
He is not a subtle actor and rarely pretends otherwise. The exceptions matter: Bajrangi Bhaijaan in 2015 rests its whole weight on his likeability and gets a genuinely warm film out of it, and Sultan works him harder than the action pictures bother to. The awards column reads modestly next to the box office, with two National Film Awards as a producer, two Filmfare Awards as an actor, and places on the Forbes highest-paid celebrity lists in 2015 and 2018.
Movies (70)
- 7 Dogs (2026)
- Raja Shivaji (2026)
- Sultan (2016)
- Ved (2022)
- Sikandar (2025)
- Pathaan (2023)
- Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015)
- Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999)
- Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998)
- Baby John (2024)
- Tiger Zinda Hai (2017)
- Dabangg 3 (2019)
- Ek Tha Tiger (2012)
- Tiger 3 (2023)
- Kisi Ka Bhai... Kisi Ki Jaan (2023)
- Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994)
- Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015)
- Radhe (2021)
- Zero (2018)
- Tere Naam (2003)
- Bodyguard (2011)
- Kick (2014)
- Karan Arjun (1995)
- Antim: The Final Truth (2021)
- Main Tera Hero (2014)
- Bharat (2019)
- Wanted (2009)
- Maatrubhumi (2026)
- Tees Maar Khan (2010)
- Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004)
TV (12)
Where to start with Salman Khan
Start with Bajrangi Bhaijaan. It is the film that makes the case for him to a sceptic, because the plot depends entirely on believing this man is decent, and he plays it with almost no vanity for once.
For the comedy, Andaz Apna Apna is the cult favourite and still the funniest thing he has done, while Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! is the enormous family wedding musical that defined the 1990s version of him. Maine Pyar Kiya is where it all begins if you want the origin.
The modern Khan starts with Wanted and hardens into Dabangg, which is the blueprint for everything loud that follows. Ek Tha Tiger opens the spy run. If you want the one time he genuinely stretched, Tere Naam is grim, overwrought and much better acted than its reputation suggests, and Sultan is the closest the later career comes to a real performance.