who appears in Hindi films. The son of actors Pankaj Kapur and Neelima Azeem,
Kapoor lived with his mother in Delhi after his parents split when he was three. He moved to Mumbai at age 10, and five years later he joined Shiamak Davar's dance academy. He appeared as a background dancer in films in the late 1990s and went on to feature in several music videos and television commercials.
Shahid Kapoor was born on 25 February 1981 to actor Pankaj Kapur and actor-dancer Neelima Azeem Kapoor's parents divorced when he was three years old; his father shifted to Bombay (and married the actress Supriya Pathak) and Kapoor lived in Delhi with his mother and maternal grandparents. His grandparents were journalists for a Russian magazine, and Kapoor was particularly fond of his grandfather: "He would walk me to school every single day. He would talk to me about dad, with whom he shared a great relationship, and read out his letters to me." His father, who was then a struggling actor in Mumbai, would visit Kapoor in Delhi once a year on his birthday. When Kapoor was 10, his mother, who was working as a dancer, moved to Mumbai to work as an actress.
In Mumbai, Azeem went on to marry the actor Rajesh Khattar. Kapoor continued living with his mother and Khattar until they separated in 2001. Kapoor continues to use the last name Khattar on his passport. He has a maternal half-brother from his mother's marriage to Khattar. From his father's marriage to Pathak, he has two paternal half-siblings. Kapoor was educated at the Gyan Bharati School in Delhi and Rajhans Vidyalaya in Mumbai. He later attended Mumbai's Mithibai College for three years.
Kapoor was interested in dance from an early age, and at the age of 15, he joined Shiamak Davar's dance institute. As a student there, Kapoor appeared as a background dancer in the films Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) and Taal (1999), in which Davar served as choreographer. During a stage show at the institute, Kapoor performed in the songs "Vogue" and "GoldenEye" to a rapturous response from the audience; Kapoor described that moment to be the first time he "felt like a star". He later became an instructor at the institute. During this time, Kapoor accompanied a friend to an audition for a Pepsi commercial featuring the stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukerji, but went on to get the part himself. He subsequently appeared in other television commercials, and also featured in music videos for several performers, including the band Aryans and the singer Kumar Sanu. Kapoor also worked as an assistant director in his father's television series Mohandas B.A.L.L.B (1998).
The producer Ramesh Taurani noticed Kapoor in the music video "Aankhon Mein" and called him for a meeting. Taurani found Kapoor, who was 20 years old at the time, too young and underweight to become an actor and asked him to wait it out for two years. Kapoor was subsequently approached by the director N. Chandra to play a parallel lead role in the sex comedy Style, but he turned down the offer in hopes of working with Taurani. Meanwhile, Taurani contracted Ken Ghosh to direct a teenage romance, entitled Ishq Vishk, for his company and recommended Kapoor for the lead role. Kapoor, who trained extensively for a bulkier physical build, was eventually selected. Before beginning work on the film, he attended acting workshops with Naseeruddin Shah and Satyadev Dubey.
Ishq Vishk, which released in 2003, tells the story of Rajiv Mathur, a teenage student who engages in a romantic affair with two classmates of contrasting personalities (played by Amrita Rao and Shenaz Treasurywala). Kapoor was attracted to the idea of playing a character with "shades of gray" since it was a departure from the traditional portrayal of a Hindi film hero. Writing for The Hindu, critic Ziya Us Salam said of Kapoor: "He has inherited his father's face and his mother's lips. That means he is no hero material, not yet – boyhood seems to have overstayed on his face – but he is not necessarily bad in the acting department." The film proved to be a sleeper hit at the box office and won Kapoor theFilmfare Award for Best Male Debut.
Following the success of his debut film, Kapoor reunited with Ghosh in a film he considered to be drastically different from Ishq Vishk. The thriller Fida (2004) featured him as a lovestruck student who is manipulated by a woman (Kareena Kapoor) and her lover (Fardeen Khan) to rob a bank. Despite criticizing the film, Rama Sharma of The Tribune wrote that Kapoor "shines in his role. He looks fresh. As an impulsive emotional and innocent guy, who is sucked into crime because of these very qualities, he manages to evoke your sympathies." Later that year, Kapoor appeared in the romantic comedyDil Maange More in which he was paired opposite Soha Ali Khan, Tulip Joshi, and Ayesha Takia. Patcy N of Rediff.com praised his dancing skills but wrote that he "tends to imitate Shahrukh Khan a lot. He does it well in some scenes, overdoes it in others." Both his 2004 releases were commercially unsuccessful.
Analyzing his career, the entertainment portal Bollywood Hungama published that his "boy next door persona" was initially perceived by critics as a weakness, but credited him for turning it into a trademark. Jitesh Pillai of Filmfare wrote that having established a niche in urban romantic roles, Kapoor defied typecasting by choosing to star in genres as varied as action films to crime dramas, leading to an unpredictable career trajectory. Following the success of Jab We Met (2007) and Kaminey (2009), Kapoor's career went through a decline. He described that period as a series of "wrong choices" and said that taking on a challenging role in Haider (2014) helped him reinvent himself. Sonal Gera of The Indian Express opined that the film established him in Bollywood. In her book Power of a Common Man, the author Koral Dasgupta writes that Kapoor does not "[conform] to any fixed rules of the trade", and notes that despite having a lopsided success ratio at the box office, he remains popular among the audiences.
Kapoor is considered one of the most attractive male celebrities in India. He regularly features in the British magazine Eastern Eye's listing of the "50 Sexiest Asian Men in the World"; in 2012 and 2013 he was ranked fourth, and in 2014 he came in fifth. He was ranked fifth on The Times of India's list of the 50 most desirable men in 2014.From 2012–15, he featured among the top 50 in the Indian edition of the Forbes' "Celebrity 100," a list based on the income and popularity of India's celebrities, peaking at the 15th position in 2015. Kapoor is the celebrity ambassador for several brands and products, including Elf Aquitaine and Colgate
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