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REVEALED: Aamir Khan's brow-code of acting
Aamir Khan is said to be one of the finest actors of his generation.
And we couldn't agree more -- he'd delivered memorable performances in his long acting career.
But somewhere down the line -- it's difficult to trace the timeline -- Aamir developed The Face, a scowl that has culminated in a pseudo-serious villain in Dhoom 3, who makes the badly-executed film even worse.
How worse you ask?
Let's just say if Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai were commissioned to lend some much needed gloss to Dhoom 2, Aamir was presumably signed on to make the franchise's fixtures -- Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra -- look good.
Before you lot fling the potent 'Haters gonna hate' argument at us, let's take a look at all the unwarranted appearances Aamir Khan's scowl-face (or, as we like to call it, brow-code of acting) has made over the years!
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Good cop, bad cop?
In Reema Kagti's Talaash, her leading man's perpetually tense eyebrows were just as distracting as the film's somewhat unsatisfactory climax.
As troubled cop Surjan Singh Shekhawat, Aamir struggles to convey the character's inner turmoil and the insomnia that stems from his anxiety.
So much so, that there comes a point in the film when the pained expression he wears all throughout makes one wonder if he really thought it through before taking on the role.
Our guess is maybe he didn't.
Nothing but the truth
Playing on his burgeoning public image of a part-time activist, Aamir scowled down at us lesser mortals from life-size hoardings ahead of his television show Satyamev Jayte's release.
He pointed at everything that was wrong with the common man and promised to fix everything, one episode at a time.
And how did Aamir made his point? You know it.
If memory serves us right...
In this ripoff of Christopher Nolan's Memento, Aamir Khan's mild-mannered business tycoon Sanjay Singhania turns into a manic-depressive killer who suffers from anterograde amnesia.
The vengeful Sanjay may forget things every 15 minutes but the trusted scowl never leaves his face.
Director's chair
May be it was the strain of handling directorial reins for the first time or just the overwhelming nature of the subject he was dealing with for his directorial debut, something did trigger Aamir's brow reflexes in Taare Zameen Par.
Not that his fans are complaining.
Terrorising much?
Aamir Khan's smooth-talking guide Rehaan Qadri's dramatic transformation into a slick terrorist is prominently marked by a change of clothes, hairstyle and, you guessed it, return of the tense eyebrows.
If only Fanaa had released earlier, onscreen terrorists before him wouldn't have had to play it the 'cold-blooded, calculative bad guy' way and die a less heroic death.
The brow code
Trying to stand up to a corrupt and morally ambivalent government?
Bring out the brows, a la Aamir's student revolutionary Daljeet in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Rang De Basanti.
The rising
The first glimpse of the scowl face can perhaps be traced back to the time when Aamir decided to turn a producer and play a freedom fighter in Mangal Pandey.
The ill-fated 2005 period drama marked Aamir's comeback after a hiatus of four years -- his last film before that was Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai in 2001.
The heart wants what the heart wants
Which is not to say that the scowl was completely absent from the maverick actor's previous works.
The brow-acting was summoned for this love-lorn side of Aamir's boisterous Aakash in Dil Chahta Hai.
Taxing times
Ashutosh Gowariker's hero in Oscar-nominated Lagaan is a naive and optimistic young lad who wants to free himself and his fellow village folk from the brutal taxes the British government has unfairly levied on them.
So what would a serious underdog in this situation need?
True grit, support from his countrymen and twitchy brows that convey the gravity of their situation with much conviction.