Around the time that Shahid Kapoor’s Shakespearean drama, Haider, released in 2014, the actor would have been one of Bollywood’s most eligible bachelors at the time — so why was love proving to be so elusive? “I have always felt like a bit of an insider and an outsider in the film industry. And I couldn’t find someone who was simple, like me, but naturally adjusted to a life of stardom,” he says. “I just didn’t find love, bro.”
Since his own arranged marriage [to Mira Rajput], Kapoor has enthusiastically endorsed the concept. Most people try Tinder first, I tell him. “Tinder came out a month or two before I met Mira, so I never got there. I wouldn’t have had the balls to anyway. People would think I’m so lame. Or they would want to date me because I’m Shahid Kapoor. That’s the reality. When you become a star, you become lonely, because your exposure to the world outside gets limited.”
It’s all the more reason he’s bent on keeping it real now—his personal and professional decisions are increasingly inward-looking. “I was cocky in my twenties, buying sports cars, dating actresses, trying to live the life. But I’m not a true-blue star. I tried to be one, and I didn’t like it. Now ‘living the dream’ is only about the films I want to do, man. Otherwise I’m normal. What you see now is truly how I am.”
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Photograph: Nuno Oliveira/ DEU Creative Management
Styling: Rahul Vijay
Art Direction: Reshma Rajiwdekar
Hair: Hakim Aalim
Make-up: James Gladwin Alaxender
