Shraddha Kapoor said no to Salman Khan at 16 because she wanted to be a psychologist
Born into one of Bollywood's busiest acting families, Shraddha Kapoor turned down a film offer from Salman Khan while still at school, planning to study psychology instead. She did enrol at Boston University, then dropped out in her first year when a producer spotted her on Facebook and cast her in a thriller.
Kapoor was born in Mumbai in 1987 to actor Shakti Kapoor and actress Shivangi Kapoor, and grew up in a Marathi cultural setting with her mother's relatives. Her aunts Padmini and Tejaswini Kolhapure act too, and the singers Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle are her great-aunts. As a child she dressed in her parents' clothes to rehearse movie lines in the mirror and tagged along to her father's shoots, where she and young Varun Dhawan pretended a torch was a camera and acted scenes for each other.
The film that pulled her out of Boston, Teen Patti in 2010, put her beside Amitabh Bachchan and Ben Kingsley but flopped. A teen comedy the next year fared no better, and she later described a dull stretch when studios hesitated to hire her. Her fortunes turned with Aashiqui 2 in 2013, playing a small-town bar singer who becomes a star playback artist; it earned 1.09 billion rupees globally and her first Filmfare best actress nomination.
Critics took her more seriously after she played an Ophelia-inspired journalist in Vishal Bhardwaj's Hamlet adaptation Haider in 2014. The same year she made her singing debut with Galliyan in Ek Villain, and she has since sung several songs in her own films. Roles pushed her into new skills: she studied dance styles with choreographers Prabhu Deva and Remo D'Souza for ABCD 2 and learned the south Indian martial art Kalaripayattu for Baaghi.
A run of poorly received films followed before the horror comedy Stree in 2018, based on the Nale Ba legend, restored her standing. Its 2024 sequel became her highest-grossing release. She has appeared on the Forbes India Celebrity 100 list every year since 2014, launched a clothing line in 2015, and is the most-followed Indian woman on Instagram.
Source: Shraddha Kapoor
