Janhvi Kapoor

Biography

Janhvi Kapoor (born 6 March 1997) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. Born to Sridevi and Boney Kapoor, she made her acting debut in 2018 with the romantic drama Dhadak, which was a commercial success. Kapoor subsequently starred in streaming films, receiving nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress for playing the titular aviator in Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020) and a woman trapped in a Freezer in Mili (2022).

Janhvi Kapoor was born on 6 March 1997. Her father is the film producer Boney Kapoor, the son of the late filmmaker Surinder Kapoor, and her mother is the actress Sridevi. She is the niece of film actors Anil Kapoor and Sanjay Kapoor.

She has one younger sister, Khushi, and two half-siblings, actor Arjun Kapoor and Anshula Kapoor from her father's first marriage. Kapoor lost her mother at age 21, when she was found dead of an accidental drowning in Dubai.

Kapoor studied at Ecole Mondiale World School in Mumbai. Before making her film debut, she took an acting course at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in California.

Kapoor made her acting debut in 2018 with the Shashank Khaitan-directed romance Dhadak, co-starring Ishaan Khatter. A Hindi-language remake of the 2016 Marathi film Sairat, it featured her as a young upper-class girl whose life turns tragic after she elopes with a lower-class boy (played by Khatter).

The film received predominantly negative reviews, but with a worldwide collection of ₹1.1 billion, it proved to be a commercial success. Writing for News18, Rajeev Masand criticized the film for removing caste-based references and deemed it inferior to the original, but felt Kapoor had "a fragility that makes her instantly endearing, and a soulful quality that makes it hard to take your eyes off her on-screen".

Conversely, Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost thought that she "lacks personality and delivers a colorless performance". She won the Zee Cine Award for Best Female Debut.