“I’ve never been nervous like this,’’ Shah Rukh Khan said on the afternoon before the Met Gala, where on Monday evening the Indian superstar will make his first-ever red carpet appearance at what is generally considered the party of the year.

“I’m wondering if I can run away from this now,’’ added a man whose onscreen derring-do is the stuff of cinematic legend; a multi-hyphenate whose many ventures have earned him a net worth estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and a made him a figure greatly beloved of, and elevated to cult status by, generations of fans.

“I’m actually very shy,’’ said Shah Rukh Khan, whose legions of devotees know him simply as SRK.

The actor, in town from Mumbai, was seated on a sofa in a suite high above Manhattan. Far below was spread the pointillist green carpet of Central Park. Tapping a Terea tobacco stick into an heated induction device, Mr. Khan discreetly took a drag. After chain-smoking cigarettes for decades, he quit very publicly on his 59th birthday in 2024. His decision to stop, like nearly everything else he does, was covered in the South Asian press with the kind of attention typically devoted to matters of state.

The man behind the Shah Rukh Khan legend is surprisingly modest in person. This is true also in a physical sense. Slender and slight of build, Mr. Khan was dressed in a pair of Rick Owens cargo jeans, Rick Owens sneakers, a Hermès hoodie unzipped deeply enough to reveal his smooth and chiseled chest and an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph watch.

While Shah Rukh Khan is not, as he quickly noted, a fashion devotee, he spent one day of his 72-hour sojourn in New York for the Met Gala prowling the aisles at Saks and Bergdorf Goodman, hunting down “the perfect pair” of jeans.