Shahid Kapoor has had an interesting journey- he’s the son of a famous father (actor Pankaj Kapur), and now a famous dad himself to his kids- Misha (6) and Zain (3). How does he protect them from the attention and scrutiny that comes along with his stardom?
Kapoor says, “I cannot keep them away from my fame, but they need to have enough of a life which has nothing to do with this, because they are their own people. They must have their own individual reality. You cannot take away the fact that their father is an actor, they should accept that. They should feel proud of that, we all are proud of each other in the family- me of my mom and dad, my wife and what she does. That’s what family is all about.”
The actor and his wife try to make it like any other normal thing, “Instead of focusing all our energies on that one thing about having famous parents- otherwise the children grow up thinking that’s all that matters.”
Kapoor is meanwhile happy that his kids don’t watch his films. Reason? “We have a very real, normal equation, I don’t want them to start perceiving me as something else. As they grow older, they will have the maturity to understand. But there is no hurry, araam se karenge,” he laughs.
His daughter, Misha must be aware of whatever happens around her more at this age. How does he explain his popularity to her? “Earlier, she would ask ‘why do people want your pics daddy?’ I told her ‘I do some work, like how you watch your cartoons, songs, I also do work which people can see. So if they like my work, they want to get a picture with me,” smiles Kapoor.
But he does share that they watched his cult classic, Jab We Met recently for the first time. “I don’t even know if they recognised me because I look so different in that film, from what I look now,” he adds. When does he plan to show them his gritty films such as Bloody Daddy? “Never,” he laughs, but also adds, “A lot of my good work, they will have to see at a later stage. I will let my wife Mira decide what they should watch. She is like ‘I don’t know what kind of movies you are doing, there’s always something happening, I can’t show them much.”
