Shahid Kapur: From pariah to popular
From a rather inauspicious start in Ishq Vishk to 2009's stupendous Kaminey,
Shahid Kapoor has come a long, long way.

By Saba Imtiaz

In 2004, the two starred in Fida, a film that actually placed them in perfect roles. A three-way love story laced with duplicity and deception that also starred Fardeen Khan, Fida had Shahid playing the younger, naive boy who falls in love with a suave Kareena. The film flopped at the box office, but now that one looks back, his performance had a glimmer of hope.

A spate of bad films - including 36 China Town - followed for Shahid. But he wasn't alone in this. It was a bad patch for several Bollywood star kids: Uday Chopra, Jugal Hansraj and Tusshar Kapoor. Quality big-budget productions were rare - (those two words don't go well together) - and a wave of cinema sparked off by indie filmmakers and offbeat directors like Madhur Bhandarkar began to gain more prominence. These were the years the stalwarts of Bollywood ruled: Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir and Salman Khan, but it wasn't a time for newer actors to prove themselves.

Luckily for Shahid though, along came Vivah, produced by Sooraj Barjatya. Now if memory fails you, the Barjatya brand of films had died out years ago: they had produced hits like Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun - a brand of cinema that was an extreme version of family-oriented romances, a far cry from the item numbers and risqué subjects that dominated Indian cinema. Starring Amrita Rao of Main Hoon Na fame, the film went on to be a hit.

And then came Jab We Met, and Shahid Kapur's career changed forever.

At this point, Shahid revealed to Farah Khan on Tere Mere Beach Mein, he had decided he would do this film to prove himself to directors. In Imtiaz Ali's second directorial venture, Shahid Kapur - as the brooding Aditya Kashyap - managed to sideline the star of the film around whose character it was based: Kareena Kapoor. The performance itself was a work of wonder: as Aditya, Kapur changes through this film as a distraught, lost young adult to an extremely sensitive, mature man who discovers a sense of humour and a desire to love again. It was the performance that landed him on the radar, which I have watched countless times over and am still amazed by.

Unfortunately for Shahid, this was also the film that finally brought out the chemistry between him and the girl he loved, but this was also the film that saw them break up. Kareena went on to date another star-kid, Saif Ali Khan. The public break-up could have seen Shahid Kapur go down the Vivek Oberoi route of oblivion.

Not Shahid. Jab We Met was followed by Kismet Konnection, a film that was widely panned because of Vidya Balan but Kapur showcased his comic timing and maturity, as well as excellent dancing skills that could have him nipping at the heels of Hrithik Roshan in a few years.

And then came Vishal Bhardwaj's Kaminey, the best commercial film to have been released in India in 2009. Kapur gave two exemplary performances in his roles as the twin brothers Charlie and Guddu, and the reason I say two is that each character was so completely different from the other that it was hard to believe that it was the same actor essaying both. Kaminey proved that Kapur could switch gears from an inane crowd pleaser like Dil Bole Hadippa to a gritty, twisted tale and excel at both. His next film, Chance Pe Dance, sees Kapur go down a more autobiographical path. Not only is he reuniting with Ishq Vishq director Ken Ghosh for it, but his role is of a struggling dancer trying to make it big. Sound familiar?
Keep your eye out for Shahid Kapur. In an industry dominated with Khans and star kids, this is one actor who hasn't just overcome his own bad luck; he's managed to create his own kismet konnection.