Ranbir Kapoor on love and loss: It affects you as an artist, but takes time to realise

An artist’s emotional evolution is bound to reflect in his work, says Ranbir Kapoor, but the actor believes he is yet to process how the highs and lows he went through in the past three years have changed him as a performer.

The 40-year-old actor lost his father, veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, to cancer in April 2020. He got married to long-time partner Alia Bhatt ahead of the release of their maiden on-screen collaboration “Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva” in September last year and they became parents to baby girl Raha in November. All these moments have given him a better understanding of life, he said.

“The biggest thing that happens in an individual’s life is when you lose one of your parents. That really is something… Especially when you’re nearing your 40s, that’s the time when something like this usually happens… Nothing prepares you for that, but it brings the family closer. It makes you understand life,” Ranbir said in a chat with news agency PTI in New Delhi.

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On life’s highs and lows

“Lot of good things and bad things come out of it… I have been blessed with a baby girl. I’ve been blessed to have married Alia last year. There have been ups and downs… But that’s life, right?” he added. The actor believes it will probably take him a few years to figure out how his emotional growth contributed to his craft.

“It does affect you as an artist, but I guess one can’t tell it right away. Maybe after a couple of years… When my father was suffering from cancer and was going through his treatment, I was working on Brahmastra and Shamshera at that time,” he said.

“When I see Brahmastra now, there are amazing memories, but there are certain scenes I see and I get reminded of moments… like Oh! At this time, he was having chemotherapy or he was on a ventilator… But how it helps you, I won’t really realise it for a couple of years,” he added.

With “Brahmastra”, Ranbir delivered a blockbuster success for the hit-starved Hindi cinema in the last quarter of 2022. His upcoming release is romantic-comedy “Tu Jhooti Main Makkaar”. Directed by Luv Ranjan, the film marks the actors return to the genre after 2013’s “Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani”.

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Working with Luv Ranjan

While he was done with rom-coms, the actor said he couldn’t let go of the idea that Luv narrated to him. It was the writer-director’s “twisted” writing that appealed to him. “We were doing another film with Ajay Devgn, but dates did not match and it kept getting postponed. At that time, he narrated Tu Jhoothi… to me and I was done with rom-coms. I told him I’ve too many of these and it’s a difficult genre to crack,” he said.

“But when he narrated this film, what was in his writing, he is tedha (twisted) in the way he thinks, his dialogues, relationship dynamics, really appealed to me. It was something new,” he said.

Ranbir said his introduction to Luv’s work was 2011’s “Pyaar Ka Punchnama”. He enjoyed the movie and texted the filmmaker expressing his desire to collaborate with him. “He is the only director I’ve ever messaged in my life,” the actor added.

Ranbir said he is concerned about people warming up to rom-coms after a good dose of action spectacles such as “Brahmastra” and most recently “Pathaan”.

(With Agency inputs)