- published: 10 Nov 2013
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Shashi Kapoor, born as Balbir Raj Prithviraj Kapoor on 18 March 1938, is an Indian film actor and film producer. He has also been a film director and assistant director in the Hindi film industry.
Shashi Kapoor is a member of the Kapoor family, a film dynasty in India's Bollywood cinema. He has appeared in a large number of Hindi language films as well as in a few English-language films.
In 2011, he was honoured with the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his contributions to Art-Cinema. In 2015, he was awarded the 2014 Dadasaheb Phalke Award, making him the third member of his family to receive the highest award in Indian Cinema after Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor.
Kapoor was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) during British Raj. He is the younger brother of Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor, the son of Prithviraj Kapoor, the widower of Jennifer Kendal, and the father of Karan Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor, and Sanjana Kapoor. From the age of four, Shashi Kapoor acted in plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor, while travelling with Prithvi Theatres. He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s, appearing in commercial films including Sangram (1950), Dana Paani (1953) under the name of Shashiraj as there was another actor by the same name who used to act in mythological films as child artiste. His best known performances as child artist were in Aag (1948) and Awaara (1951), where he played the younger version of the characters played by his older brother Raj Kapoor and in Sangram (1950), where he played younger version of Ashok Kumar. He worked in four Hindi films as a child artist from 1948 to 1954.