Rahul Bhat

Bhat was born in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India into a Kashmiri Pandit family.[2][3]

Bhat began his career as a fashion model. In 1998, he participated in the Graviera Mr. India contest, where he won the Mr Photogenic award.[4][5] He did advertisements for Pond's and Breeze detergent,[6] and appeared in music videos like "Soni Lag Gayee" with Pakistani singer Sajjad Ali, and "Punjabi Munda" for Tips Industries.[4] He gained popularity for his role opposite Simone Singh in Heena, a top-rated soap opera on Sony Entertainment Television, which aired for five years from 1998 to 2003.[7][8][9]

Bhat had his first film role in the romantic drama Yeh Mohabbat Hai in 2002, directed by Umesh Mehra.[10] The film was not well received, but Priyanka Bhattacharya of Rediff.com found him “sincere” and Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama opined that he had made a “decent debut”.[11][12] The following year, he starred in the comedy Nayee Padosan, in which he played dual roles of a Tamil man and a don.[13]

Disillusioned with the kind of roles he was being offered, Bhat took a sabbatical from acting.[14] He instead began his own production company Filmtonic Entertainment, under which he produced television soap operas such as Meri Doli Tere Angana (2007–2008), Chhukar Mere Man Ko (2007), and Tum Dena Saath Mera (2009).[1][15] He has said about this period, "I quit acting because I was angry. I did not want to do B and C grade projects. I wanted to work on good scripts and with committed filmmakers. But nothing came my way and that made me unhappy."[1]

Bhat at the premiere of Ugly at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival[16]

The filmmaker Anurag Kashyap approached Bhat to play the part of a struggling actor whose daughter is kidnapped in his thriller film Ugly (2013).[17] To prepare for his role, Bhat started consuming alcohol heavily and deprived himself of sleep to create dark circles around his character's face.[18] For a sequence, where Bhat had to cry, Kashyap kept talking to him for three hours and he eventually broke down and wept. The camera kept rolling during that period.[19] Ugly premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it received standing ovation.[20][21] It was also screened at the New York Indian Film Festival and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.[22][23][24] Arunava Chatterjee of India Today called Ugly a "pathbreaking crime fiction" and found Bhat to be “outstanding” in it.[25] Brian Clark of Screen Anarchy added that Bhat "does especially impressive work transitioning his character through some demanding plot twists and power shifts".[26]

Three years later in 2016, Bhat played a role opposite Katrina Kaif in the romantic drama Fitoor and alongside Priyanka Chopra in the crime film Jai Gangaajal.[3][27] In a review for the latter film, Srijana Mitra Das of The Times of India wrote that even in a small role, he had played his character's "radicalism with aplomb".[28]

The following year, Bhat had a leading role in Union Leader, an Indian-Canadian drama about a chemical factory supervisor who raises the issue of worker's health and safety against an unsympathetic management.[3][29] Anna M. M. Vetticad wrote that Bhat had brought an "X factor to his performance" which exceeded the screenplay's limitations.[30]

Bhat starred in Sudhir Mishra’s romantic drama Daas Dev (2018), a retelling of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Devdas set in the political landscape of Uttar Pradesh, in which he played the lead role opposite Aditi Rao Hydari and Richa Chaddha.[31] In 2019, he appeared alongside Chaddha and Akshaye Khanna in the courtroom drama Section 375. He played a Bollywood director accused of rape. Rajeev Masand wrote that he “does well as the arrogant director”. [32]

In 2021, Bhat starred in Man Naked, an experimental single-shot short film.[33] Bhat reunited with Anurag Kashyap in 2022, in Dobaaraa, a remake of the Spanish mystery film Mirage, starring Taapsee Pannu.[34] Anupama Chopra found Bhat's to be the "most notable character" in the film and added that his "frayed good looks and exhausted manner infuse a much-needed comic edge into the film".[35]

In 2023, Kashyap’s latest film Kennedy premiered at Cannes Film Festival and received an overwhelming response. It has since screened in Sydney Film Festival and BIFAN. [36]