(From top) Rani Mukherjee in Black and in Paheli; Aamir Khan in Mangal Pandey and in Rang De Basanti; Karisma Kapoor, and with Aamir Khan in Raja Hindustani; Urmila Matondkar, and in Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara

Aamir Khan is driving. In the passenger seat, Aamir Khan offers him gum. From the backseat, Aamir Khan shouts for the pankha to be switched on. Aamir Khan, who is sitting next to him, directs the air-conditioning towards him. Behind them, in the back of the car, Aamir Khan pokes wonderingly at the ceiling of the car. Suddenly, the car stops. All of them look out of the window. Aamir Khan walks up to the car and peers in suspiciously. He asks where the group is headed. Everyone else blurts out their destinations, but Aamir Khan who is in the driver’s seat, smiles and says he just needs to be moving ahead.

This is the ‘new improved’ Aamir Khan with ‘new added features’ and a sleek and trendy ‘new look’. No, it isn’t a typographical error and, no, we’re not talking about some reworked new car that has hit the market. We are talking about our good old Aamir Khan in his good new clean-shaven look. But, then, the man is a brand. And the new feature of this brand is his wavy short mane. And what’s more, when the latest model smiles, you can now see his upper lip!

The makeover master is reputed for remodelling himself with every film. The neat sternness of Sarfarosh (John Mathew Matthan) was followed by the full-on funk of Dil Chahta Hai (Farhan Akhtar). The crisp white shirts were replaced by short-sleeved ones in pinks and blues. The electric-shock spikes he sported are being aped till date. When he agreed to play a historic figure, the handlebar moustache became a cult. “I’m quite used to the Mangal Pandey look now and will change my hairstyle only after I start filming for a new film,” the actor had said before Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti happened. And sure enough, now it’s the youthful unkempt look with which he hopes to awaken our generation.

The daring and drastic changes in his style have kept the entire nation on its toes. When he’s grown his hair, it’s been front-page material. When he’s cut them, it’s been bigger front-page material! But is it just his adventurous spirit that pushes him towards the hatke looks? He deserves more credit than that. He is one of the smartest Bollywoodians, who knows not just the methods of acting, but also those of marketing. He knows, better than anyone else on this side of the continent that a star is not born, he is marketed. And this is how he markets himself; this is how he creates his own stardom. With all the hide-and-seek games that he plays with the media, he wins all rounds. He’s unavailable, but only to a point of heady excitement, not of frustration. And when he does ‘reveal’ himself from time to time, it’s always worth the wait. Unchangingly, every single time, it is Aamir Khan madeover!

Makeovers make stars. Urmila Matondkar received a major makeover at the hands of designer Manish Malhotra for Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela. The all-encompassing flair of her long frocks was folded and the pointed ballet shoes were tossed into the sea. From them on she has pranced about in minis and snipped her hair at the drop of her beret. She finally broke free from the shackles of her child artiste image and the sexy siren tag has never left her despite films like Pinjar (Chandraprakash Dwivedi) and Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara (Jahnu Barua).

Another, er, ugly duckling that magically transformed into a ravishing beauty was Karisma Kapoor. The audiences couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the dazzling young thing in Dharmesh Darshan’s Raja Hindustani. The thick, badly done eyebrows and the garish pink lipstick was a thing of the past. We discovered a princess who was delightfully aware of her new found grace. Even her clumsy gait gave way to dainty smoothness. As her tresses changed style and colour, her career graph had a makeover of its own. Cream projects fell in her lap. Directors like Yash Chopra and Sooraj R. Barjatya roped her in and she went on to act in Shyam Benegal’s Zubeidaa, which proved to be another feather in her image cap. Shilpa Shetty became not just a star but a whole new person with Dharmesh Darshan’s Dhadkan. Raveena Tandon’s look must have shocked everyone including herself when Malhotra worked his magic with her for the song, Sheher ki ladki in Ashok Honda’s Rakshak.

Some makeovers salvage careers. Ajay Devgan took tinsel town by surprise when he shed his awkward gait and strange clothes and walked around with coloured locks and trendy shirts. Saif Ali Khan traded his waistbands for jockeys and chopped off the extra locks, grew some killer muscles, put himself through waxing torture and voila! He became the star of the show in Gautham Menon’s Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein. The prince has come a long way from his Aashiq Awaara days.

Manish ‘Makeover’ Malhotra’s Midas touch has created a galaxy of stars and starlets. “Before this ‘total look’ revolution hit the film industry, heroines were loud and wore studio-tailor-styled-clothes,” says the makeover king. “No right-thinking woman ever emulated any star.”

A regular image overhaul is crucial for a star. It helps to create and maintain the star’s brand value and market interest. When you stick to one image for too long, you become stale bread. And it’s best to reheat it to freshness in good time. Fan following remains huge only till you make the fans feel they’re with the ‘in’ thing.

The star of the millennium, Amitabh Bachchan, is a classic example. After the sorry performances of his comeback films like Mrityudaata (Mehul Kumar) and Lal Badshaah (K.C. Bokadia), a much-needed revamp happened through the Kaun Banega Crorepati series. The perfectly tailored suit, the white beard and the engaging conversation all became a part of his new reworked dynamic persona. Before the series, he was an actor desperately clinging to his gone youth. And after the series, he was the handsomest dude in his age bracket, who had the guts to age gracefully in front of the nation. National respect grew and his star value skyrocketed. Filmmakers became daring with his characters’ persona. He carried off with equal elan the casual, unkempt look in Shaad Ali’s Bunty Aur Babli, the scary enigma in Ramu’s Sarkar, and the chic turnout in Apoorva Lakhia’s Ek Ajnabee, all in the same year. No wonder the man’s name is synonymous with stardom.

Unexpected experimental make-overs, though mostly restricted to the screen, have a major impact on the star status of the actor. Kamalahasan has always been one for experimentation with films like S. Shankar’s Hindustani, and his own Chachi 420. If there is anyone in Bollywood who could have challenged Aamir Khan in his makeover marketing tricks or a moustache-twirling duel, it is this man who grew long moustaches and a beard for his film Hey Ram (he even ‘shortened’ his legs to play a dwarf in Appu Raja). He has also acknowledged that state-of-the-art makeup is part of his histrionic resources.

Many actors realise that they need to constantly rework their persona to stay put in Bollywoodian skies. Anil Kapoor almost came full circle from his British Indian look in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942 A Love Story to his cool British NRI look in Vivek Agnihotri’s Chocolate. Preity Zinta has had back-to-back screen makeovers in her recent films. Rani Mukherjee has been consistently landing films that require image makeovers, leaving her looking fresh and the audiences asking for more.

A star’s makeover is not much different from a product’s. Because at the end of the day, it’s the selling of an image. When stars go through a makeover it’s like changing the packaging of a brand of noodles. Teams of professionals work on these makeovers. Aamir’s new look in RDB was finalised after nine months of experimentation. Producers spend small fortunes on these things because they realise that the more waves a star’s look in a film creates, the larger the crowd pull will be. And here the marketing of the star fuses with the marketing of the film.

A star has to be talked about. Makeovers are not just about getting a new hairstyle and buying new T-shirts, but about getting noticed in them. When an actor makes news with facial hair, or the lack of it, he has become a star. If he makes us feel as if he has stripped naked and done the chest-beating routine, but has really just gelled his hair, he has become a star. And once he has become a star, he needs to keep recharging the battery. Because unlike the ones in the skies, the stars on earth don’t shine for eternity.