Sidharth Malhotra

Sidharth Malhotra (born 16 January 1985) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He began his career as a fashion model before switching to acting. He began his career on television before working with filmmaker Karan Johar on the 2010 film My Name Is Khan. In Johar’s teen film Student of the Year (2012), he played his first main role. Malhotra went on to star in films like as the romantic comedy Hasee Toh Phasee (2014), the thriller Ek Villain (2014), and the drama Kapoor & Sons (2016). Following a career slump, he received critical acclaim for his role as Vikram Batra in the war film Shershaah (2021), for which he was nominated for a Filmfare Award for Best Actor. In 2023, he married his co-star in the film, Kiara Advani.

Early and Personal Life

Malhotra was born and raised in Delhi, India into a Punjabi Hindu family. Sunil, a former Merchant Navy captain, and Rimma Malhotra, a housewife. He attended Delhi’s Don Bosco School and Naval Public School, before graduating from Shaheed Bhagat Singh College at the University of Delhi. He began modelling at the age of 18. Despite his accomplishments, he opted to leave after four years because he was dissatisfied with his job.

Malhotra was rumoured to be dating actress Alia Bhatt in the late 2010s. He confirmed the relationship after they had broken up in 2019. Rumours about him dating actress Kiara Advani first surfaced in 2020, but he has yet to formally address the connection. They married on February 7, 2023, in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony. Their wedding got extensive media coverage, with their official wedding photos becoming the most liked Instagram post in India to date.

Career

Early work and breakthrough (2009–2016)

Malhotra’s debut acting job was in the 2009 television series Dharti Ka Veer Yodha Prithviraj Chauhan, in which he played the minor character Jaichand. In order to continue his acting career, he successfully auditioned for a film directed by Anubhav Sinha. However, the film was cancelled, and he went on to serve as an assistant director on Karan Johar’s 2010 feature My Name Is Khan. He made his film debut in 2012, with rookies Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt, in Karan Johar’s teen thriller Student of the Year. He played Abhimanyu Singh, a scholarship student who competes against his rich closest buddies in an annual school championship. Student of the Year was a financial success, with a total revenue of $1.09 billion.

Malhotra returned to the big screen after a year apart, starring alongside Parineeti Chopra in the 2014 romantic comedy Hasee Toh Phasee, which portrays the love story of a scientist and an insecure ambitious businessman. The film was a commercial success, grossing more than 1.7 billion (US$21 million) worldwide. The film’s box office success positioned him as one of the most promising new actors in Hindi cinema. Malhotra then starred in Brothers, a 2015 remake of the 2011 American film Warrior directed by  Karan Malhotra and co-starring Akshay Kumar. The film received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office. Malhotra’s next film, the family drama Kapoor & Sons, directed by Shakun Batra, was a critical and commercial triumph, grossing 1.53 billion globally.

The film, which stars Fawad Khan and Alia Bhatt, depicts the story of two brothers with opposing personalities (Malhotra and Khan) who return home to their dysfunctional family after their grandfather suffers a cardiac arrest.

Career fluctuations (2016–2020)

Following the success of Kapoor & Sons, Malhotra starred alongside Katrina Kaif in the romantic comedy Baar Baar Dekho as a time-traveling mathematician. The film, directed by Nitya Mehra, was met with critical acclaim. Later that year, he co-starred in the action comedy A Gentleman with Jacqueline Fernandez from writer-director combo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K., which was produced by Fox Star Studios; while being highly anticipated, it had a lukewarm reaction. Both films were flops at the box office.

Malhotra co-starred with Sonakshi Sinha in a 2017 remake of the 1969 mystery film  Ittefaq. The film, which was released in 2017, was well acclaimed by reviewers but bombed at the box office, earning only $500 million in total. Malhotra appeared in Neeraj Pandey’s Aiyaary (2018) alongside Manoj Bajpayee and Rakul Preet Singh. The picture debuted at 30 million and grossed 183.1 million dollars. In a bad review, Bollywood Hungama stated, “On the whole, Aiyaary misses the mark and is a huge letdown due to its flawed script and the lengthy run time.”

Malhotra’s two 2019 films were critically panned and termed box office flops. His second collaboration with Parineeti Chopra was the romantic comedy Jabariya Jodi. The film received terrible reviews and was deemed a disaster. Milap was his second appearance. Marjaavaan, an action film directed by Milan Zaveri and starring Ritesh Deshmukh and Tara Sutaria.

Shershaah and beyond (2021–present)

Malhotra starred in the biographical war film Shershaah, based on the life of Indian army soldier  Vikram Batra, in 2021. The film premiered on Amazon Prime Video after multiple delays due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Critics had conflicting feelings about it. Malhotra’s portrayal in particular received praise, with Saibal Chatterjee saying that he “has what it takes to flesh out a real-life martyr who has left behind a larger-than-life aura”. At the time of its release, Shershaah was the most-watched film on Prime Video in India.

The fantasy comedy Thank God, co-starring Ajay Devgn, was Malhotra’s sole feature release in 2022, and it failed commercially. In the thriller Mission Majnu the next year, he played an Indian spy stationed in Pakistan before to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The film was eventually released on Netflix after multiple delays from its planned theatrical premiere. The Hindustan Times’ Monika Rawal Kukreja compared it to Shershaah and claimed that Malhotra was let down by the writing despite being in “top form, with a charming onscreen presence.” Malhotra’s upcoming projects include the action flick Yodha and Indian Police Force, a web series for Amazon Prime Video directed by Rohit Shetty.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010	My Name Is Khan	—	Assistant director
2012	Student of the Year	Abhimanyu Singh
2014	Hasee Toh Phasee	Nikhil Bharadwaj
	Ek Villain
2015	Brothers	Monty Fernandes
2016	Kapoor & Sons	Arjun Kapoor
	Baar Baar Dekho	Jai Varma
2017	A Gentleman	Gaurav Kapoor/Rishi Purohit	Also singer for song “Bandook Meri Laila”
	Ittefaq	Vikram Sethi
2018	Aiyaary	Major Jai Bakshi
2019	Jabariya Jodi	Abhay Singh
	Marjaavaan	Raghuvendra Nath
2021	Shershaah	Vikram Batra/Vishal Batra
2022	Thank God	Ayaan Kapoor
2023	Mission Majnu	Amandeep Ajitpal Singh / Tariq Ali
	Yodha	TBA	Filming

External links

Sidharth Malhotra at Instagram

Sidharth Malhotra at Twitter