Rajat Kapoor

Rajat Kapoor paid for Raghu Romeo (2003), which he wrote and directed, through emails to friends, and the film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. Born on 11 February 1961 in New Delhi, the actor, filmmaker and playwright grew up in Old Delhi, joined the Delhi theatre group Chingari in 1983 and moved to Pune in 1985 to study at the Film and Television Institute of India. He began in parallel cinema; his first screen role was in Kumar Shahani's Khayal Gatha (1989). When acting work was scarce in the 1990s he wrote and directed short films, and his first feature, Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One, came in 1997. Dil Chahta Hai gave him his mainstream breakthrough in 2001, and Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding brought him international notice. After Raghu Romeo he made Mixed Doubles and Mithya (2008). He was nominated at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Siddharth: The Prisoner, played Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the UK television film The Last Days of the Raj, and acted in Aparna Sen's Bengali film Iti Mrinalini. He crowdfunded his film RkRkay and has hosted the chat show Lounge on NDTV Good Times. His three National Awards are for the documentary Tarana, the short Hypnothesis and Raghu Romeo. His work is in Hindi cinema, and among his latest credits is Drishyam: The Conclusion (2026).