MUMBAI — For a man who has spent four decades rationing his public life one carefully chosen sentence at a time, Aamir Khan announced his third marriage in character: a phone call from the United States, a single confirmation, a date.
“The news about the marriage is true,” the actor told Variety’s Indian edition on Tuesday, adding simply, “It’s on July 5.” News agency PTI carried the confirmation within hours, in a dispatch picked up by The Tribune and most of the Indian entertainment press by Tuesday night.
The wedding to Gauri Spratt, his partner of a little over two years, ends a week of swirling speculation and gives Bollywood its biggest personal headline of the summer. The ceremony, reports consistently describe as an intimate affair at home with close family rather than a production number, will be the 61-year-old’s third marriage and his first since his 2021 separation from filmmaker Kiran Rao.
Khan’s framing of the decision was less announcement than settled fact. He said the couple had been living together and felt ready “to take our relationship to the next level,” describing himself as at peace. “In my heart, I’m already married to her,” he said. “So, to formalise our togetherness just seems like a natural progression.”
Spratt has stayed almost entirely outside the publicity machine that now surrounds her. Originally from Bengaluru and working in the wellness and beauty sector, she was introduced to the public at Khan’s 60th birthday gathering in March last year, when the actor told reporters they had known each other for some 25 years before reconnecting. Since then the couple has appeared together at industry events, photographed by wire agencies but rarely speaking.
Khan was previously married to Reena Dutta from 1986 to 2002 and to Rao from 2005 to 2021. Both separations were notably unacrimonious by industry standards, and Rao has remained one of his closest creative collaborators, a partnership that outlived the marriage on screen as well as off.
The reaction has split along predictable lines, with congratulations running alongside commentary about a third wedding at 61. Veteran actress Rakhee Gulzar, in remarks carried widely by Indian outlets on Tuesday, offered the bluntest defense, asking what exactly was wrong with marrying at 60.
The date also slots into what is shaping up as the most managed public month of Khan’s recent career. Eleven days after the wedding, he is due on stage at BFI Southbank in London to close the London Indian Film Festival with a career-spanning conversation, tied to the 25th anniversary IMAX screening of “Lagaan” on July 12. A honeymoon, if one is planned, will apparently have to share the calendar with a retrospective.
That sequencing is the story beneath the story. Bollywood weddings of this magnitude usually arrive as leaks, drone shots and unconfirmed guest lists; Khan converted his into a controlled, on-record disclosure delivered in two sentences to a trade publication, with the wire services left to relay rather than reveal. It is the same instinct that has governed his career, where films arrive once every few years, marketed on scarcity.
What he did not provide was detail. There is no confirmed venue, no guest list, and no word on whether a larger reception will follow the private ceremony. His office has issued no formal statement beyond the interview, and Spratt herself has not spoken publicly about the wedding at all.
Khan, for his part, seemed unbothered by the gap between public curiosity and what he chooses to fill it with. “I feel complete today,” he said of Spratt entering his life. The rest, as ever with him, will arrive precisely when he decides it should.
