Khan was born on 2 November 1965 into a Muslim family in New Delhi. He spent the first five years of his life in Mangalore, where his maternal grandfather, Ifthikar Ahmed, served as the chief engineer of the port in the 1960s.[8][9][b] Khan's paternal grandfather, Meer Jan Muhammad Khan, was an ethnic Pashtun (Pathan).[11][12] Khan's father, Meer Taj Mohammed Khan, was an Indian independence activist from Peshawar who campaigned alongside the Khudai Khidmatgar, a Pashtun nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also known as Bacha Khan or the "Frontier Gandhi") that advocated for a united and independent India free from British rule.[13] Meer was a follower of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and affiliated with the Indian National Congress.[11] As of 2010, Khan's paternal family was still living in the Shah Wali Qataal area of Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar.[11] They speak Hindko and claim to be originally from Kashmir.[11][15] Meer moved to New Delhi in 1948 after the partition of India.[16] Khan's mother, Lateef Fatima, was the daughter of a senior government engineer.[c] His parents were married in 1959. Khan described himself on Twitter as "half Hyderabadi (mother), half Pathan (father), [and] some Kashmiri (paternal grandmother)".[21]
Khan grew up in the Rajendra Nagar neighbourhood of Delhi.[22] His father had several business ventures including a restaurant, and the family lived a middle-class life in rented apartments. Khan attended St. Columba's School in central Delhi where he excelled in his studies and in sports such as hockey and football, and received the school's highest award, the Sword of Honour. Initially Khan aspired to pursue a career in sports, however owing to a shoulder injury in his early years meant that he could no longer play.[25] Instead, in his youth, he acted in stage plays and received praise for his imitations of Bollywood actors, of which his favourites were Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, and Mumtaz. One of his childhood friends and acting partners was Amrita Singh, who became a Bollywood actress. Khan enrolled at Hansraj College (1985–88) to earn his bachelor's degree in Economics, but spent much of his time at Delhi's Theatre Action Group (TAG), where he studied acting under the mentorship of theatre director Barry John.[29] After Hansraj, he began studying for a master's degree in Mass Communications at Jamia Millia Islamia, but left to pursue his acting career.[30] He also attended the National School of Drama in Delhi during his early career in Bollywood.[31] His father died of cancer in 1981,[d] and his mother died in 1991 from complications of diabetes. After the death of their parents, his older sister, Shahnaz Lalarukh, born in 1960, fell into a depressed state and Khan took on the responsibility of caring for her.[36] Shahnaz continues to live with her brother and his family in their Mumbai mansion.[37]
Although Khan was given the birth name Shahrukh Khan, he prefers his name to be written as Shah Rukh Khan, and is commonly referred to by the acronym SRK.[1] He married Gauri Chibber, a Punjabi Hindu, in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony on 25 October 1991, after a six-year courtship.[38][39] They have a son Aryan (born 1997)[40] and a daughter Suhana (born 2000).[41] In 2013, they became parents of a third child, a son named AbRam,[42] who was born through a surrogate mother.[43] Both his elder children have expressed interest in entering the entertainment industry; Khan has stated that Aryan, who is studying film at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in California, aspires to become a writer-director,[44][45] while Suhana, who served as assistant director for Khan's film Zero (2018), is studying drama and acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for higher education.[46][47] Suhana made her acting debut in November 2019, in a short film titled "The Grey Part of Blue."[48] According to Khan, while he strongly believes in Islam, he also values his wife's religion. His children follow both religions; at his home the Qur'an is situated next to the Hindu deities