A candid, contemplative journey through the life of Anil Kapoor — actor, father, eternal learner — revealing reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of authenticity in an ever-changing cinematic landscape. The actor speaks his heart out to Khalid Mohamed.

Anil Kapoor’s cinematic journey is a masterclass in reinvention, discipline, and emotional depth. From his humble beginnings and industry rejections to global acclaim, Kapoor’s relentless commitment to craft, character authenticity, and personal growth sets him apart. Balancing fame with family, he embraces vulnerability, silence, and dialect mastery as tools of performance. Whether reflecting on childhood struggles or the pandemic, Kapoor’s narrative is one of introspection and evolution. He remains an important figure in Indian cinema — grounded, versatile, and driven by a passion that continues to fuel his art and inspire generations.

Lately, he’s been cast in the much-discussed project King headlining Shah Rukh Khan. Of course, he wouldn’t have given his go-ahead if his role didn’t have steam and substance. Anil Kapoor has made the transition from portraying the quintessential hero to character roles which give him an opportunity to assert his acting chops. For example, Ranbir Kapoor may have hogged the footage in the mega-success albeit toxic Animal, but without Anil Kapoor as his dismayed father, the film in its final shape is unthinkable.

Currently, he’s been busy around the clock with films, which he doesn’t wish to talk about till they’re completed. “You’ll be surprised and proud of me,” he says with unbridled certainty.

Not given to introspecting unless he’s held at the point of a knife, it was quite untypical of Anil Kapoor—now 68—to recount paragraphs from chunks and shards of his life when I got in touch with him. Over voicemail, he begins with his recurring dreams. From what he can remember, they are mostly about filmmakers, friends, or family who have hurt, betrayed, or humiliated him. Rather than getting upset, he sees himself showering them with ‘good deeds.’

Early Rejections and Quiet Triumphs
At the outset of his estimable career, he endured rejections and humiliation, unsure why Bombay cinema’s top and even mid-rung producers, directors, and actors were behaving rudely with him. There were phases when he found himself crying and almost giving up, taking lessons in classical music to become a singer instead.
Careful not to take names, he stressed that the solution had to be positive, never spiteful; he had returned kindness to the put-downers. That’s why today he can get up in the mornings, geared up to face a new day. No one, he believes, can hurt him anymore, thanks to his policy of returning a slap with an embrace. His primary motive now is to keep his immediate family happy. “My wife and three children are all idealistic, honest and creative,” the voice on the mail continues. “I strive towards making them emotionally and financially secure, though they have their own distinct identities. Still, I do this every day of my life without making them aware of this.”

His father, producer Surinder Kapoor—initially an assistant to K. Asif and then a solo filmmaker who suffered a series of flops—did not make Anil feel that he had the potential of a star hero. Consequently, the aspirant felt like an outsider, who longed to work in the films of Raj Kapoor, the breezy entertainers of Nasir Hussain, and alongside the off-mainstream films by Shyam Benegal and Aparna Sen.

Nasir Hussain didn’t give him the time of day. Anil Kapoor could have probably been in Raj Kapoor’s planned war opus Param Vir Chakra, for which the showman required the unstinted cooperation of the then Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram (the project was eventually shelved). The Kapoors were family friends. Raj Kapoor had told his daughter Ritu that he was thinking of Anil in one of the roles. “So, I was shocked when Rishi Kapoor, may his soul rest in peace, said in his autobiography (Khullam Khulla) that Anil hadn’t even been remotely considered, and that hurt.”

If he is to be believed, the actor can chill, withdraw from himself, instead of being active 24 x 7. His pragmatic way of chilling is by sleeping every day for seven to eight hours or taking a nap in the afternoons. It’s when he faces the camera that his thoughts have to be all there. And that’s because, “I’m not a poet’s son, I wasn’t born into a family of creative minds familiar with the aesthetics of literature, theatre, and the other arts,” he maintains.

He used to hang around with the Maharashtrian, Christian, and Muslim boys of Matunga and then of Chembur, where the family shifted, living in one to two rooms. Surinder Kapoor and his family were hardly typically Punjabi, so there has been no one overriding influence.

The Devotion to Craft
Anil’s prime obsession has been to consistently improve on his craft, technique, stay ‘emotionally wet,’ grasp the graph of his character, strengthen his voice, diction, vocabulary, and physicality. He has to preserve his body, treat it with care as one would keep a vintage car in shape. “I am devoted to this car, it still has to run on highways and rocky roads smoothly,” he remarks. “From my birth to today, I service this car regularly, it can’t ever get dilapidated, it must stay brand-new as if it had just come in from a showroom.”

He admits that he could have been a better husband, father, and friend. Acting has always consumed an excessive amount of his time and attention. Gratifyingly, the balance between the actor and the person has been changing: “My glass, my workload would be full to the brim. I have slowly but steadily emptied the glass and refilled it. If I can achieve a 50-50 per cent balance between the actor and the real me, I’ll be over the moon. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Most actors have to achieve this balance. If I were to devote 100 per cent of myself to my family, I’d become cranky, disgusting, boring. They would probably throw me out of the house for becoming overbearing, a nag.”

The pandemic (at its peak in Mumbai) has affected us all in various harrowing ways, he states—the anxiety levels, the question mark hanging over tomorrow. He kept himself cool and calm, largely because of the family support system and the fact that professionally, that time had been surprisingly good, even the best for him. An actor craves throughout his life for job opportunities. “Touchwood, during those pandemic months I found myself in a situation now where I could make choices, say ‘No’ if I had to, and yet remain wanted and saleable in the market. Recently, too, I must have politely declined offers from the biggest of production banners, simply because I didn’t connect with the roles scripted for me.”

Financial Confidence and Family Pride
Upbeat, he says, “I’ve never been offered the kind of money ever before. During the first 25 years of my career, I was paid peanuts. That had to be corrected, after all, for an extended family to make their own choices. This is not patriarchy—without meaning any gender issues—it’s merely an ingrained instinct in all parents.”

In the course of the pandemic, he came to know his wife, Sunita, and his children way more closely, especially Harshvardhan, who has his own independent mindset and career strategy. Sonam has charted her own life, marriage, and career beautifully; he likes to think of her as a daddy’s girl, and was emotionally overwhelmed when his first grandson, Vayu, was born. He doesn’t have a ‘favourite’ among his three children. In fact, Rhea appears to be the closest one to him, a friend. They have their fights, sulk, and then become closer than ever before. Frequently, he has felt that he’s been toughest on Rhea because she can take it.

“I’m obsessed with myself as an actor, true,” he adds, “but I’ve emerged from that one-way street to become equally if not more obsessed about my family. For a father, there’s nothing more fulfilling than to know that the children are masters of their own destiny, which they have achieved without a shred of backing from me. Initially, I would be apprehensive, fretting—are they making mistakes? I needn’t have, after all, we all make mistakes. I have made so many in the past, but then we look back on them as a mandatory learning experience.”

Always Learning, Never Settling
Without rough edges, he contends, there is the danger of becoming complacent or not evolving. That’s why he continues with voice and breathing exercises at home, to the surprise of his family, which jokes, “Are you preparing for Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan?”
Far from it, it’s been necessary. For instance, to achieve a Gujarati dialect, he had to secure the help of a coach for the film Total Dhamaal. That’s how it has always been—like being coached by theatre expert Ranjit Kapoor for the Haryanvi lehza for Woh 7 Din, and by Anil Chaudhary for an Agra accent in Karma, in which he played a raffish guy opposite Dilip Kumar saab as the jailor. He had learnt the sitar for Tu Payal Main Geet, his first film ever. As a child artist, he had played the younger version of Shashi Kapoor. To observe other children, he would travel by three different buses to reach his sitar tuitions.

He admits that his talaffuz is still not in the league of Dilip Kumar or his diction as perfect as Naseeruddin Shah’s. Still, within his capabilities, he has been learning—right from Meri Jung, when Javed Akhtar advised him not to play the lawyer typically. He was inspired to create a different persona as a street-smart Bambaiya, without thinking of Raaj Kumar in Ujala or Amitabh Bachchan in Amar Akbar Anthony. Keeping that advice in mind, instead of using his inborn U.P. dialect for Mashaal, he would pick up elements from the delinquents he knew from his growing-up years in Chembur, Koliwada, and Dharavi.

Of late, he contends Gully Boy got the slum-side dialect right. Otherwise, faux accents have become the put-on flavour of the season. An actor has to go for the real, which has been his constant endeavour—right to this date while playing a Rajasthani cop for the Netflix film Thaar. The pitch and inflections of the dialogue have to be sourced from the soil, which is perhaps why he has stayed grounded, listening attentively to people he comes across rather than talking to them. Mastering dialects is a process which has to come naturally.

The biggest compliment for his voice was received from Hrishida (Hrishikesh Mukherjee) while filming Jhooth Bole Kauva Kaata. The auteur would be quite stingy with praise but had complimented him: “Anil, you have a beautiful voice. You have the range to sound forthright and yet vulnerable and innocent simultaneously.”

Acting as Silence
In sync with the character an actor is portraying, there can be haltering speech, silences, and pauses. This was ingrained in him by Roshan Taneja at his acting school and by M.S. Sathyu right from 1978 when he was cast in his Kahan Kahan Se Guzar Gaya.

There should be no rigid dos and don’ts. He believes in all schools of acting, including the Stanislavski method of mobilising the actor's conscious thought to activate emotional experience and subconscious behaviour. Of course, an actor has to do this without losing his individuality. And he’s more comfortable with silent shots: “Listening without overreacting—silences convey so much more than reams of dialogue. You’ll notice I used Clint Eastwood’s brooding quality in Shekhar Kapur’s Joshilaay. In Yash Chopra’s Lamhe and Mahesh Bhatt’s Thikana, I didn’t have much dialogue either. Moreover, in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, I had to intimidate Dev Patel’s character with just a fleeting look and body language. And for the remake of the international series 24, in which I portrayed a fictitious President, I understood how pauses can convey so much more effectively—a trait that was ingrained in Dilip Kumar.”

The Unofficial Therapist

Ask him whether he’s ever been in therapy and counselling and the response is, “Ha, no way, given the fact that I end up counselling my friends and my children whenever they’re feeling low or uncertain. At most, if I’ve ever felt stonewalled, Sunita has been there to counsel me.”

Exercising has been his therapy. He did feel uncertain about playing a young romantic hero in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942: A Love Story. Anil had suggested that he should cast Aamir Khan or Bobby Deol. But the director was adamant. That’s when he moulded himself into the role by jogging, running, and lifting weights. That made it feasible for him to look the part, soften his face, which can be noticed especially during the song Kuchh Na Kaho

His looks have never been that of the conventional hero of the 1970s and ’80s. To that, his reaction is, “I guess so. I had a moustache, small eyes, and I was skinny to the point of being gaunt. This was soon after the time when the heroes—Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna, and Dara Singh—had large frames. My legs were skinny, I was extra-hairy. Yet, I wanted to be myself. The moustache would always be there, like my dad had one, so did Raj Kapoor—they had the Peshawari look. The stubble too, that was totally me. If I had changed my look at all, I wouldn’t have been Anil Kapoor.”

When he shaved his moustache off for the first half of Lamhe, he felt naked! “It was quite traumatic when I saw myself in the mirror and then faced the camera,” he chortles. “When my kids saw me like that, they burst into laughter. But Yash Chopra was thrilled, he said, ‘Wah! You’re such a committed actor. Moochh bhi mundva li.’ I was so starry-eyed about working in Lamhe that after a couple of days of the shoot, I was cool with it. And to my relief, the audience loved to see me clean-cut.”

Clarifying Self-Obsession
On his self-obsession, the actor clarifies, “You’re getting me wrong. What I mean is that it’s an actor’s duty to be passionate about his craft. I’m in love with everyone who reciprocates my love. I have to be grounded, I can’t walk on air, can I? That’s why I mingle, relate with everyone I come across. I’m not hyper at all.”

During his childhood, even if a rupee was given to him, it was like a king’s treasure. He pauses for a moment before stating, “My life seems unreal to me now. Right from the moment when I first stood next to Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan for a shot in Shakti, I felt I was dreaming. And that dream has only become better and better. I go through what is called REM sleep, quite peacefully, I see the more pleasant portions of the dream on waking up. Yes, as I said, there are some recurring dreams—mostly about filmmakers, friends, and members of my own family. No one can hurt me anymore, thankfully. They know I have learnt how to return a slap with an embrace.”

How close was he to the Raj Kapoor family during his adolescence? “I was only close to Krishna Aunty and Rima, and I was respectful to all the others. Our families had known one another in Peshawar. Raj Kapoor saab’s mother, who would keep unwell, would be taken care of by my dad’s sister.”

Was there any hostility between Sunny Deol and him at a point? Frankly, he states, “When Joshilaay was announced, it was conceived as a two-hero film. I was perfectly okay with his name coming above mine in the credit titles. But when the ads came out in the trade paper Screen, there was one page featuring him solo and another one featuring us together. Even the film’s writer Javed Akhtar felt I should have been given equal prominence.”

“Three prominent films had been released that year—Sunny’s Betaab, Jackie Shroff’s Hero, and my Woh Saat Din. My Mashaal had already been released earlier. The math went something like this,” he continues. “Mashaal hadn’t done well but there were rave reviews for my performance in The Times of India and Indian Express. And I was even given the cover story in Sunday magazine by Vir Sanghvi. Manmohan Desai also spoke favourably about me in an interview with Cine Blitz. I was being described as a star-actor like Sanjeev Kumar who could fit into any role. Manmohanji was thinking of casting me in his next production Allahrakha, but then Jackie Shroff was chosen instead.”

Turning Down Parampara
Despite being close to Yash Chopra, he had rejected his offer for a role in Parampara, “because it was a father’s role, eventually done by Vinod Khanna. Even Sanjeev Kumar would have suited the role. At that point, I couldn’t possibly have portrayed the father of Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan. I was told by Yashji, ‘Look, Dev Anand still does romantic roles at his age, there won’t be any problem for you in the future.’ He must have been upset by my decision, but Yashji never held grudges. He went on to give me some of my best roles.”

Some of his early roles were written with Amitabh Bachchan in mind. Right? He confirms that. “I’m aware that Mr India and Meri Jung were written for Mr Bachchan. When I stepped into Mr India, Javed Akhtar and Shekhar Kapur made the part Chaplinesque, part Raj Kapoor. I’d already played the angry young man in Mashaal in any case. I’d say I was being cast in different moulds. For Woh 7 Din, (director) Bapu had me see quite a few Laurel and Hardy films, and introduced me to the genius of Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. Bapu would storyboard every frame of the film beforehand, but would allow space for improvisations and suggestions. I was already familiar with his style, since I had watched him at work on Hum Paanch. It was our home production. It was the first production being handled by Boney and me.”

A Father's Struggles
“We could no longer watch our father climbing stairs and getting exhausted. For a while, he had worked as Shammi Kapoor’s secretary too. Dad’s production Shehzada had the superstar Rajesh Khanna, whose down phase had already started with the flops of Mere Jeevan Saathi and Joru Ka Ghulam. Before Shehzada, dad’s productions Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan, Jabse Tumhen Dekha Hai, Tarzan Comes to India, and Ek Shriman Ek Shrimati had all flopped, as if in a domino effect. Ponga Pandit was the only one which performed averagely. Dad used to be in the dumps. In the evening, he’d be drinking his whisky and brooding. And he had his first heart attack. Perhaps that’s why I never have more than one or one-and-a-half drinks an evening. I’ve never been drunk, ever.”

To conclude, he returns to his Hum Paanch days: “My job was to pick up the actors from the airport, recce for locations, fix the rentals, and look after set properties. I couldn’t dare ask for a role since the principal characters were all perfectly cast—from Sanjeev Kumar and Shabana Azmi to Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah, and Raj Babbar. I was much too young then to fit in. Fortunately, Hum Paanch did tremendous business in Bombay and Maharashtra especially. Our family finally reached a level of stability. I realised right away that production is a thankless job. It’s not like today when we have duly credited creative producers.”