Aamir Khan is known to dive headfirst into his films and characters. While director Rajkumar Hirani saw to the film’s progress, Aamir was busy learning the traits of youngsters nowadays. Aamir essays the character of Rancho in the film, a 20-something collegian who believes in expressing his creativity rather than going by the book. When Aamir was quizzed on how he worked on his body language in order to mould himself into a 20-year-old, he stated, “I spent a lot of time observing youngsters, most of them being my son Junaid’s friends. I would notice the way they behaved while speaking to someone, the way they slouched, the clothes they wore and several such teenage traits.”

Aamir also added that there are several scenes in the film where the audience would notice the traits he aped, “You will notice that in the scenes with Boman, who plays our principal in the film. I have always slouched, making him seem taller. Also, I improvised many dialogues, always adding some casual sentences to the end of the dialogue to make them seem more young and natural.” As far as his physique went, Aamir lost 10 kilos for his role in 3 idiots. “When I beefed up for Ghajini, it was for my role. It wasn’t a style statement; it was a requirement of my role. So, when I came to know that I had to play a student in 3 Idiots, I had to lose all that muscle and had to get lean in order to look the part. So, I played a lot of outdoor sports such as badminton and football, along with a lot of weight loss training.”

When it came to his clothes, Aamir sought inspiration in his Ghajini director and close friend Murugadoss, “He’s just this small, puny thing with such vigour and conviction in his eyes. My character in 3 idiots is very much like him. I noticed that Murugadoss used to always wear clothes twice his size, something I felt was very teenage-like. I even borrowed a couple of t-shirts from him.”