Actor Imran Khan recently opened up about his “strange” relationship with money, revealing how his earnings skyrocketed from Rs 5 lakh for Kidnap (2008) to Rs 12 crore for a project he chose not to name after the overnight success of his big Bollywood debut Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na.

Imran shared that he had already completed three films before Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na released in 2008. However, the record-breaking success of the coming-of-age romantic comedy led to an unexpected surge in his pay cheques, leaving him questioning whether his acting abilities had really improved exponentially.

“I had actually made three films by the time my first film was released. Jaane Tu was a home production. The second film was Kidnap, where they didn’t want me and offered Rs 5 lakh. I was working at that scale. And then, for the next film, you get Rs 7-8 crore. Did my acting improve so much from the last film to this film? I can’t say that. That’s a crazy jump,” Imran said on Unfiltered by Samdish podcast.

He added that by the time he was 27 or 28, he had more money than he had ever imagined, which created a sense of disconnect. “I wasn’t hungry for money. I suddenly had more than I had ever asked for, while my friends my age were earning nothing close to that,” Imran recalled.

Imran further revealed that his highest pay cheque of Rs 12 crore left him feeling perplexed rather than elated. “By the time I reached the end of the schedule, I was thinking, if I could give this Rs 12 crore back and take those six months of my life back, I would. Give me my life back,” he shared.

During the conversation, the 42-year-old actor also spoke about his divorce and recovery. He shared that while he was growing up, he was “asset-rich but cash-poor”.

“My uncle Aamir is a movie star, but he’s my mother’s cousin. That’s not my money. I grew up with my mother and my stepfather, Raj Jotri, a working actor who was also part of Lagaan. My grandfather was a successful film producer in the 1960s and 1970s, earning at the scale of that era. By the 1980s and 1990s, when I was a teenager, we were asset-rich. We lived in a big house on Pali Hill...But cash-poor. My pocket money was less than many of my friends. I was by no means deprived, but I certainly wasn’t rolling in money when I made my first film,” Imran shared.

He is set to return to the silver screen with the Aamir Khan-produced Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, which will hit theatres on 16 January, 2026. The film also marks comedian Vir Das’s directorial debut. Mithila Palkar, Mona Singh, Sharib Hashmi and Srishti Tawde round off the cast of the film.