Anil Kapoor
Anil Kapoor is an actor, born 1956.
More than a hundred films across a career of over forty years, two National Film Awards, seven Filmfare Awards, and a production company running since 2005. Mr. India (1987) is where most people start, a fantasy adventure in which he plays both Arun Verma and the title character, and it remains the film named first in most conversations about him.
The stretch from 1989 to 1994 is where the range shows: Inspector Lakhan in Ram Lakhan, the crime drama Parinda, a double role in Kishen Kanhaiya, then Beta and 1942: A Love Story. He could carry a masala blockbuster and then do something almost still, and he was rarely typed as one or the other for long.
What he is unusually good at is playing large without playing stupid. In the comedies, Welcome and No Entry and Total Dhamaal, he goes as broad as anyone in Hindi cinema and never signals that he considers himself above the material. In Dil Dhadakne Do he plays a wealthy patriarch and lets the vanity leak out around the edges of an otherwise charming man. The energy is the constant. The calibration is what changes.
The international detour was brief: the quiz show host Prem in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), then Brij Nath in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). After that he went home and, unusually for a star of his generation, got bigger rather than smaller, taking hard-edged supporting roles in Animal (2023), Fighter (2024) and War 2 (2025), and playing a badly behaved version of himself in AK vs AK (2020).
Movies (50)
- Animal (2023)
- Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
- Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
- Fighter (2024)
- War 2 (2025)
- Alpha (2026)
- Subedaar (2026)
- Heer Ranjha (1992)
- Total Dhamaal (2019)
- Ramayana (2026)
- AK vs AK (2020)
- King (2026)
- Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)
- Dragon (2027)
- Pagalpanti (2019)
- Wanted (2009)
- Welcome (2007)
- Tees Maar Khan (2010)
- Malang (2020)
- Race 3 (2018)
- Welcome Back (2015)
- JugJugg Jeeyo (2022)
- Race (2008)
- Kishen Kanhaiya (1990)
- Nayak: The Real Hero (2001)
- Taal (1999)
- Race 2 (2013)
- Halla Bol (2008)
- No Entry (2005)
- Yuvvraaj (2008)
TV (16)
- The Kapil Sharma Show (2016)
- The Great Indian Kapil Show (2024)
- Koffee with Karan (2004)
- 24: India (2013)
- Comedy Nights with Kapil (2013)
- Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai (2002)
- Bigg Boss OTT (2021)
- Bigg Boss OTT (2021)
- The Drama Company (2017)
- Kaun Banega Crorepati (2000)
- Rising Star (2017)
- The Anupam Kher Show (2014)
- The Romantics (2023)
- The Roshans (2025)
- Dance Deewane (2018)
- BFFs with Vogue (2016)
Where to start with Anil Kapoor
Anyone who knows him only from Slumdog Millionaire has seen the least of him. It is a sly, enjoyable performance in a small part, and it is nothing like the career.
Go to Mr. India first. It is a 1987 fantasy adventure of enormous scale and considerable silliness, and he plays the straight man to all of it with complete conviction.
For the dramatic register, Parinda is the serious one and still among the best Hindi crime films of its decade. Nayak: The Real Hero is the popular favourite, a political fantasy running almost entirely on his energy.
For comedy, Welcome is the broadest of them and the most purely enjoyable. For the modern work, Dil Dhadakne Do is the best written thing he has been in this century, and Animal is what reminded a younger audience how much menace he can carry.
AK vs AK is the curio, with him playing himself and being very funny about it. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the other Hollywood credit and a footnote.