'I Have Grown Up.' Shahid Kapoor Reveals After Marriage and Fatherhood

Like a bona fide film star, he has lived life in the fast lane for the last 14 years (since his debut with Ishq Vishk; 2003). But Shahid Kapoor admits that after marriage (with Delhi girl Mira Rajput) and fatherhood, he doesn’t feel like “a boy anymore.” He says: “With marriage and the baby; I think I have grown up. You just grow up [automatically]. I am not a boy anymore; I feel like a man and I like being one (smiles).”

But Shahid adds that “every man should have a boy alive in him”. “But it’s good to reach a point wherein you feel like a man. And now, I feel that in the true sense. I am a man, have grown up and understood where my home front is; and that’s where my priorities are,” he says.

So, what’s his state of mind right now? “There’re a lot of things. I, of course, feel very settled. It does bring in a few changes when one settles down and has a family. Getting married and then having a child – it all happened to me in the last three year and also, it was all very close to each other,” says the Haider actor.

Shahid admits that his “settling down” has “brought in a huge change in me as a person.” He says: “Now, I feel the need to make people happy. That’s not something I used to feel earlier. I don’t know exactly what but I guess some part of me has definitely changed, and it has happened for a reason (smiles).”

Among other things, the Kaminey star adds that he no longer “react to random things and is not reactive as a person.” “I am in a good rhythm, and I am feeling good about that. But at the same time, when you have worked for 14 years and when you look at your work, you feel like, ‘there’s so much more I could have done.’ So, therefore, I feel the need to make every opportunity count today,” he says.

Be it Ishq Vishk, Jab We Met or Vivah, Shahid has been loved by masses in romantic capers. “Somehow, by default, in most actors’ careers – over the years – they are remembered by the love stories that they have done. They (love) break the barrier of time and audiences keep going back to them. I have been a part of a couple [of such films] and I hope my next film, Padmavati also falls into that category. It definitely has the makings of being something like that,” he says.