Bollywood actor Aditya Roy Kapur was born in Mumbai on 16 November 1985. His father Kumud Roy Kapur was an Indian Jewish, mother Salome Aaron. Kapur is the youngest of the three siblings, his eldest brother Siddharth Roy Kapur, who had married actress Vidya Balan and his second elder brother Kunaal Roy Kapur is also an actor.

Kapur is not a trained actor, though he has taken dance lessons and also diction classes to improve his Hindi accent. According to him he "had no burning ambition to become an actor," and was content being a VJ, until he was called to audition for London Dreams.

Ayan Mukerji's coming-of-age romantic comedy Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) alongside Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and Kalki Koechlin. Kapur's performance earned him positive reviews and a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film itself received mixed to positive reviews from critics, and became the fourth highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2013.

Kapur was next seen opposite Parineeti Chopra in Habib Faisal's romantic dramedy Daawat-e-Ishq (2014). He then starred opposite Katrina Kaif in Abhishek Kapoor's romantic drama Fitoor, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Neither of these films fared well at the box office.

In 2016, Kapur made a guest appearance in Gauri Shinde's Dear Zindagi starring Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan, which was released in November 2016. Towards the end of 2016, he completed filming for Shaad Ali's romance Ok Jaanu opposite Shraddha Kapoor. The film, a Hindi remake of the Tamil film O Kadhal Kanmani, released in January 2017.