Shahid Kapoor was born on February 9, 2013 in New Delhi to actor Pankaj Kapoor and actress Neelima Azeem.
He divorced his parents.
When he was three years old, his father moved to Mumbai and married actress Supriya Patak.
Shahid Kapoor continued to live with his parents in Delhi. His grandmother was a reporter for Russia's Sputnik magazine, and Kapoor was particularly fond of his grandfather.
"Every day I would go to school, he would talk to me about my father, who had a good relationship with him, and he would read his letters to me," says Kapoor.
When Kapoor was 10 years old, his mother was working as a dancer, he moved to Mumbai to work as an actress.
In Mumbai, Azeem married actor Rajesh Khattar.
Kapoor continued to live with his mother and father-in-law until they separated in 2001.
Kapoor continues to use the name Khatar in his passport.
He has a brother Ishan from his mother's marriage to Khatar.
Since her father's marriage to Patak, she has had two half-sisters, Sana and Rohan.
Shahid Kapoor studied at Gyan Bharatiya School in Delhi and Rajahans Vidyalaya in Mumbai.
He then attended Mattibai College, Mumbai for three years.
Kapoor has loved dancing since childhood and at the age of 7 he joined the Shyamak Dawar Dance Institute.
There, as a student, Kapoor appeared in films as a background dancer in Heartbreak Hey (1997) and Taal (1999), where Dawar worked as a choreographer.
During a stage show at the institute, Kapoor sang "Vogue" and "Golden E" which had a positive response from the audience. He described the experience for the first time as "feeling like a star".
He later became a teacher at the institute.
At the time, Kapoor was on a search for a Pepsi commercial with a friend who starred Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukherjee, but injured himself.
He has appeared in television commercials for the KitKat and Close Up brands, among others, and has appeared in music videos for several actors, including Aryans and singer Kumar Sanu.
Kapoor also took over as his father's assistant director in the 1998 Mohandas B.A.L.L.B television series.