Ranbir Kapoor

Ranbir Kapoor debuted with a white towel and a resounding box office flop.

It was in 2007 with the film Saawariya. Critics were brutal toward the young man who carried the weight of being the grandson of Raj Kapoor and the son of Rishi Kapoor (two of the biggest names in Indian cinema). But the stigma of being a rich kid with a golden last name didn't last long.

It wasn't the dream start.

Two years later, in 2009, he chose to step away from the artificial glamour and shoot Wake Up Sid. He played an apathetic young man in Mumbai who had no idea what to do with his life. That role connected with a generation that was tired of the invincible heroes of the 1990s. And that's where his real journey as an actor began.

The Reinvention of Privilege

In 2011 came Rockstar, and everything changed for the industry. Kapoor locked himself away to transform into Janardan Jakhar (a tormented musician who seeks out pain to reach artistic glory). The intensity of his performance was such that many critics stopped comparing him to his predecessors. He won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor and moved away from his image as a romantic comedy heartthrob.

But his career has never been a straight upward line.

Because Kapoor has an almost suicidal tendency to choose risky projects. In 2012 he starred in Barfi!, playing a deaf and mute man. He didn't say a single word in the entire film. It grossed more than 1,700 million rupees and proved he could fill theaters without relying on dialogue or the typical Bollywood action sequences.

Then came years of creative and commercial drought.

Between 2013 and 2017 he strung together several titles that didn't work. Bombay Velvet was a financial disaster of biblical proportions for the studio. So the actor retreated into methodical work and avoided social media (a decision he still maintains to protect his public image). In 2018 he reclaimed the throne with Sanju. It was the biopic about the controversial actor Sanjay Dutt, and the box office numbers were massive.

The Turn Toward Extreme Violence

Kapoor understands that cinema in India has changed since the pandemic. In 2022 he released Brahmastra: Part One Shiva after five years of troubled production and constant delays. It was a bet on visual effects and mythology that worked at the box office but divided audiences because of its simplistic script.

And then the chaos of 2023 arrived.

With Animal, he shattered every preconceived notion of what a Bollywood leading man should be. He played a toxic, violent man in a movie that runs three and a half hours. Much of the international press labeled the film misogynistic. But the numbers don't lie. It grossed over 9,000 million rupees worldwide and became the biggest commercial hit of his entire career.

In 2024 the actor began physical training to play Lord Ram in the Ramayana trilogy directed by Nitesh Tiwari. The estimated budget for this production exceeds $ 100 million. Filming was planned with motion-capture technology developed in Los Angeles studios.