Shraddha Kapoor

Biography

Shraddha Kapoor (born 3 March 1987) is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi films. One of India's highest-paid actresses, Kapoor has been featured in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list since 2014 and was featured by Forbes Asia in their 30 Under 30 list of 2016. The daughter of actor Shakti Kapoor, she began her acting career with a brief role in the 2010 heist film Teen Patti, for which she received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut, followed by her first leading role in the teen drama Luv Ka The End (2011), but both films failed to propel her career forward. Kapoor had her breakthrough with Mohit Suri's romantic musical Aashiqui 2 (2013), which earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress. She received critical appreciation for playing a character inspired by Ophelia in Vishal Bhardwaj's acclaimed drama Haider (2014) She went on to establish herself with starring roles in the romantic thriller Ek Villain (2014), the dance drama ABCD 2 (2015), and the action film Baaghi (2016). After a series of poorly received releases, Kapoor regained commercial success with the comedies Chhichhore (2019) and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (2023), the action thriller Saaho (2019), and the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe films Stree (2018) and its sequel Stree 2 (2024). The latter emerged as her highest-grossing release and earned her a second Filmfare Award nomination for Best Actress. In addition to acting, Kapoor has sung several songs for her films. She is also a prominent celebrity endorser and, in 2015, launched her own clothing line. On Instagram, she is the most-followed Indian woman.

== Early life and background == Kapoor was born and raised in Mumbai. On her father's side, Kapoor is of Punjabi descent, and on her mother's side, she is of Marathi and Konkani descent. Her maternal grandfather, Pandharinath Kolhapure's, (the nephew of Deenanath Mangeshkar and maternal first cousin of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle) paternal family hailed from Kolhapur and her maternal grandmother hailed from Panaji, Goa. In an interview with The Hindustan Times, Kapoor revealed that, she was raised in a Marathi cultural setting as her maternal relatives lived in Maharashtra. She has said that she went through a tomboyish phase as a child and described herself as having a strong attitude, because of which she was deliberately picking fights with boys.

Kapoor's family members include her father Shakti Kapoor and mother Shivangi Kapoor, her elder brother Siddhanth Kapoor, her two aunts Padmini Kolhapure and Tejaswini Kolhapure, who, besides her mother, are all actors in Indian Cinema. She is the great-niece of Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Meena Khadikar, Usha Mangeshkar and Hridaynath Mangeshkar. Hailing from a family of actors, Kapoor desired to become an actress since a young age. Wearing her parents' clothes, she used to rehearse film dialogues and dance to Bollywood songs in front of the mirror. She also accompanied her father to various shooting locations in her childhood. During one of David Dhawan's shoots, Kapoor befriended actor Varun Dhawan, to play with him, and they were holding a torch pretending it to be a camera while delivering film lines to each other, and they were also dancing to Govinda's film songs. Kapoor did her schooling at Jamnabai Narsee School and at the age of 15, she shifted to the American School of Bombay where she was schoolmates with Tiger Shroff and Athiya Shetty. In an interview with The Times of India, Shetty revealed that they all used to participate in dance competitions. Believing herself to be competitive at the age of 17, Kapoor played soccer and handball as she thought these games were challenging. Kapoor then enrolled in Boston University to major in psychology, but she left in her first year to appear in her debut film after she was seen on Facebook by producer Ambika Hinduja, who cast her for a role in Teen Patti. In an interview with Filmfare, Shakti Kapoor revealed that Kapoor was barely 16 years old when she was offered her first film, Lucky: No Time for Love (2005) by Salman Khan, after he saw one of her school play performances, but she rejected the proposal as she was aspiring to become a psychologist. Kapoor was trained as a singer since her childhood as her maternal grandfather and mother are classical singers.

== Career ==

=== Early work and breakthrough (2010–2015) ===

Kapoor made her acting debut in the 2010 thriller Teen Patti, alongside Amitabh Bachchan, Ben Kingsley and R. Madhavan. She played the role of a college girl. The film received generally negative reviews, though her performance was better received. Preeti Arora, writing for Rediff.com said, "though a bit raw, she has a lot of potential." Nikhat Kazmi reviewed: "Shraddha Kapoor makes an interesting debut as the edgy youngster who sheds her specs for sleaze, with alacrity." The film failed to do well at the box office; however Kapoor's performance earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut. Kapoor admitted that after her debut film’s failure, she faced a "dull phase" in her career as production houses were hesitant to collaborate with her, leaving her without work. After her debut, she signed a three-film deal with Yash Raj Films and featured in their 2011 teen comedy Luv Ka The End, with Taaha Shah. Kapoor portrayed the lead role of a teenage student who plots against her boyfriend after he cheats on her. The film underperformed at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics. However, Kapoor's performance received positive critical reviews. Taran Adarsh wrote: "Shraddha is a revelation, catching you unaware with a confident performance. She's electrifying in the sequence when she breaks down after getting to know the true intentions of her lover." For her performance, Kapoor received the Stardust Searchlight Award for Best Actress. Kapoor was subsequently offered the lead female role in Aurangzeb (2013) as a part of her deal with Yash Raj Films. However, she signed on to Vishesh Films' Aashiqui 2 (2013) instead, thereby cancelling the three-film contract with Yash Raj Films. In 2013, Kapoor found her breakthrough role in Mohit Suri's romantic musical Aashiqui 2, the sequel to the 1990 film Aashiqui. She was cast as Aarohi Keshav Shirke, a small-town bar singer who becomes a successful playback artist with the help of a popular male singer (played by Aditya Roy Kapur). The film was a box office success with a global revenue of ₹1.09 billion (US$11 million). Film critic Anupama Chopra called Kapoor a "real triumph" and added that her "porcelain face has a haunting vulnerability". However, Vinayak Chakravorty of India Today wrote that she "looks pretty though fails to add spark". Kapoor received several nominations in the Best Actress category, including her first at the Filmfare Awards. The same year, she also appeared in a guest appearance for the romantic comedy Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, playing the fiancée of Imran Khan's character. Kapoor next reunited with Suri for the romantic thriller Ek Villain (2014), in which she also made her singing debut with the song "Galliyan". The film tells the story of a hardened criminal (played by Sidharth Malhotra) whose terminally-ill wife (played by Kapoor) is brutally murdered by a serial killer (played by Riteish Deshmukh). The film was generally perceived to be plagiarised from the Korean film I Saw the Devil (2010), although Suri claimed that it was an original film. In her review, Raedita Tandon of Filmfare called the film a "gritty, engaging thriller", and stated that Kapoor was a revelation in it. The film eventually emerged as a major commercial success with domestic revenues of over ₹1 billion (US$10 million). Her second release that year was Vishal Bhardwaj's highly acclaimed ensemble drama Haider, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, set during the Kashmir conflict of 1995. She played the Ophelia-based character, a journalist named Arshia, opposite Shahid Kapoor and Tabu. Writing for Deccan Chronicle, critic Kusumita Das praised Kapoor's effort in capturing the varied nuances of her character and noted that her portrayal was "surprisingly composed". Also that year, Kapoor performed an item number "Dance Basanti" in the Karan Johar-produced thriller Ungli. In 2015, Kapoor starred in a sequel to the dance film ABCD: Any Body Can Dance (2013), entitled ABCD 2. She portrayed the role of Vinita Sharma, a hip-hop dancer who competes in an international hip-hop competition alongside her childhood friend (essayed by Varun Dhawan). In preparation for her role, she learned different genres of dance form from choreographers Prabhu Deva and Remo D'Souza. Produced by Walt Disney Pictures, the film earned ₹1.57 billion (US$16 million) worldwide to become her most widely-seen film to that point.

=== Career fluctuations (2016–2017) ===

Kapoor began 2016 by featuring as star Tiger Shroff's love interest in the action film Baaghi, about a pair of rebellious lovers set against the backdrop of a martial arts school. The role required her to practice Kalaripayattu (a martial art originating in the south of India). Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express considered her character in it to be dated, but thought that she played the romantic and action sequences "well enough". Commercially, the film performed well and collected a total of ₹1.26 billion (US$13 million). Kapoor's final release in 2016 was the rock musical drama Rock On 2, a sequel to 2008's Rock On!!. She was cast alongside Farhan Akhtar, Arjun Rampal and Prachi Desai. She played the role of Jiah Sharma, an introverted singer and keyboard player, who suffers a neglectful relationship with her father. To prepare, she spent time reading books in isolation and undertook vocal training under the singer Samantha Edwards. Namrata Joshi of The Hindu disliked the film and considered Kapoor's performance "self-consciously meek and submissive". Rock On 2 did not recoup its ₹450 million (US$4.7 million) investment, thus emerging as a commercial failure at the box office. In 2017, Kapoor starred in Shaad Ali's romantic drama Ok Jaanu, in her second collaboration with Aditya Roy Kapur. A remake of Mani Ratnam's Tamil romantic drama O Kadhal Kanmani (2015), the film was produced by Karan Johar under the banner of Dharma Productions. It received mixed reviews from critics and Kapoor's performance was generally noted as inferior to Nithya Menen's. Kapoor next appeared in the romance Half Girlfriend, in which she was paired opposite Arjun Kapoor. It was based on Chetan Bhagat's novel of the same name, and reunited her with director Mohit Suri. In a review of the latter film, Raja Sen of NDTV considered it to be a "preposterously dimwitted romance" and criticised Kapoor as "shrill and insubstantial". Later in 2017, Kapoor appeared in Apoorva Lakhia's Haseena Parkar, a biopic of terrorist Dawood Ibrahim's sister, who ran a crime ring of her own. Kapoor played the titular role, alongside her brother Siddhanth Kapoor, who essayed Ibrahim's character. The film was panned by critics upon release; Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost considered Kapoor's performance to be as "bland as the screenplay", adding "she tries to appear mature and menacing, but the effort shows too much". None of her 2017 releases performed well at the box office.