Shahid Kapoor: Very few people knew I was Pankaj Kapur's son, he never called to get me roles | Exclusive

Shahid Kapoor with father Pankaj Kapur.

Shahid Kapoor has completed 20 years in Bollywood as an actor this year. On the latest episode of our Sit With Hitlist series, the actor opened up about his struggling days, not taking any help from his actor parents - Neelima Azeem and Pankaj Kapur - and the relationship he had with his father as a child.

"I never lived with my dad. I stayed with my mom. She became an actor when I was 10. And that's when she shifted to Mumbai and I shifted with her. I kind of got exposed and I ended up going to shootings, and somebody would be like, 'Arey yeh toh cute hai, isko kuch kara lo'... I started dancing after that and then ads started happening," he told Mid-day's Mayank Shekhar.

The actor said very few people knew that he was Pankaj Kapur's son. "I was actually very proud of the fact that I was doing it without being known as an established actor's kid or actually calling people who your father has worked with because that kind of gives you an in. None of that really happened with me," he added.

"My dad was a very private person so he didn't have a huge group social group of friends. He thought it would probably not be self-respecting of him to pick up the phone saying mere bete ko lelo ya mere bete se mil lo. At that time, it was considered, at least with certain set of people who felt a certain way, that you know, that's not right. So, I had grown up in that kind of atmosphere where they had made it on their own merit."

Shahid also elaborated on the equation he had with his father as a child. "My father was not in Delhi, so, I would probably see him once a year till I turned 10 and I shifted to Mumbai. Once I shifted to Mumbai, I had more time (with him)... By nature of distance, interaction was limited. But once I started staying here we found our groove," he said.

Shahid also explained how it was more natural for him to become an actor, than his father, who was the son of a professor in Ludhiana. "He was born to a professor in Ludhiana and his aspiration to be a film actor I think was far more blasphemous so to say, than for an actors' son to be want to be a hero. He was actually the one in the family who broke out towards the arts so to say, and he took that step of stepping away from a father who was a professor and then a principal," he said.

Watch the full interview here: