Ranbir Kapoor

Kapoor entered Hindi cinema in 2007 with Saawariya and then spent 2009 building one of the better years any young Indian actor has had: Wake Up Sid, Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year inside twelve months, three films with almost nothing in common except that he is credible in all of them.

What he is good at is drift. Kapoor plays men who are late to their own lives, and he plays them without asking you to like them for it. Ved in Tamasha is a man performing someone else's script. Bunny in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is charm that keeps moving so that it never has to commit. Barfi! is closer to silent comedy technique than to conventional screen acting, built out of timing and face. The exception proves the point: Rockstar, where the drift curdles into self-destruction, is the performance most people name first.

Then there is the star business, which runs on a different track. He played Sanjay Dutt in the biopic Sanju, took the lead in the fantasy Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, and in 2023 anchored Animal, a violent revenge picture that split its audience loudly and repositioned him for a different one. Seven Filmfare Awards, a place on Forbes India's Celebrity 100 and a spot on the Time 100 list in 2026 put him near the top of the industry. Ramayana and Love and War are what comes next.