Rajat Kapoor

Rajat Kapoor was born on 11 February 1961^[2] in New Delhi, India and grew up in Old Delhi.^[3] In 1983 he joined the theatre group Chingari in Delhi^[4]. In 1985 he moved to Pune to attend the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).^[1]

Kapoor started out in Parallel Cinema, making his debut in the 1989 Kumar Shahani film Khayal Gatha.^[5] When he had trouble finding acting jobs in the 1990s, Kapoor began writing and directing shorts. He made his full-length directorial debut with Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One (1997), which had Irrfan Khan and Naseeruddin Shah in minor roles.^[1]

In 2001, Kapoor got his big mainstream break-in Dil Chahta Hai, as Preity Zinta's character's uncle.^[6] He received international attention in Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding in which he played an abusive uncle.^[7] Since then, he has written, directed, and appeared in many films. He played Muhammad Ali Jinnah in a UK television film The Last Days of the Raj in 2007. In 2003, he wrote and directed the independent film Raghu Romeo, which he financed by sending e-mail requests for money to his friends. Although it was not a box office success, the film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. He then directed and starred in Mixed Doubles, a film that deals with swinging in contemporary Mumbai.^[1] In 2008 he directed a sleeper hit Mithya. He was also nominated for Best Performance by an Actor for Siddharth: The Prisoner at the 2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. In the year 2010, he has also starred in a Bengali movie Iti Mrinalini opposite Konkona Sen directed by Bengali film writer Aparna Sen.

Apart from films, Kapoor hosts the tri-weekly chat show Lounge telecasted by NDTV Good Times.^[8] He also worked in television shows, including Rishtey which was aired on Zee TV in the episode "Milan".^[9] Tired of pitching his stories to investors, Kapoor reached out to his friend Chet Jainn, founder of the crowdfunding platform goCrowdera.com to raise initial seed fund for his next film called RkRkay.^{[10][11][12][13]} The "RkRkay" crowdfunding campaign went on to raise over ₹35,00,000.^[14]

Kapoor is a three time National Award winner, first for his 26-minute non-feature documentary, Tarana, then for his short, Hypnothesis, and after that for Raghu Romeo in Best Feature Film in Hindi section.^[15]

Kapoor married Meenal Agarwal, a photographer-production designer in 1996^[16] and has two children, a daughter Rabia and a son Vivan.^[1] Kapoor is an atheist, and he has said he believes God is a man-made concept.^[17]