Rajat Kapoor

Rajat Kapoor is an Indian actor, writer and director born in 1961. Kapoor was born in Delhi, India. As a teenager he would watch films with his family and decided to become a filmmaker at the age of 14. He mainly focused on acting at first. In 1983 he joined the theatre group Chingari in Delhi, later moving to Pune to attend the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). When he had trouble finding acting jobs in the 1990s, Kapoor began writing and directing shorts. He made his full length directorial debut with Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One (1997), which had Irrfan Khan and Naseeruddin Shah in minor roles. In 2001, Kapoor first appeared in Dil Chahta Hai, which starred Aamir Khan, as uncle of Preity Zinta's character. He received international attention in Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding in which he played an abusive uncle. Since then, he has written, directed and appeared in many critically acclaimed films including Corporate, Bheja Fry, and also as Muhammad Ali Jinnah in a UK television film The Last Days Of The Raj in 2007.