Ranbir Kapoor was born on 28 September 1982 in Mumbai to Rishi and Neetu, both actors of the Hindi film industry. He is the great-grandson of Prithviraj and the grandson of actor-director Raj. His elder sister, Riddhima (born 1980), is an interior and fashion designer. The actresses Karisma and Kareena are his first cousins. Kapoor was educated at the Bombay Scottish School in Mahim. He has said that he was not inclined towards academics and would always rank among the bottom five students of his class.
Ranbir Kapoor is posing with his father and mother
Kapoor with his parents Rishi (right) and Neetu in 2013
Kapoor has admitted that constant arguments between his parents deeply affected him as a child: "Sometimes the fights would get really bad. I would be sitting on the steps, my head between my knees, till five or six in the morning, waiting for them to stop". He has said that these early experiences led to a "reservoir of emotions building up inside [him]", which compelled him to look for an outlet in films. Kapoor has said that he was close to his mother, but struggled to establish a friendly relationship with his father. After completing his tenth standard examinations, he travelled to America to assist his father on his directorial venture Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999), during which he developed a closer bond with him.
After completing his pre-university education from the H.R. College of Commerce and Economics,[6] Kapoor relocated to New York City to learn film-making at the School of Visual Arts, and subsequently pursued method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He later remarked that living by himself in New York City inspired him to pursue a career in Bollywood. In film school, Kapoor directed and starred in two short films, entitled Passion to Love and India 1964. However, he found learning about cinema in school to be "useless", and preferred being on an actual set. He, thus, returned to Mumbai and worked as an assistant director to Sanjay Leela Bhansali on the 2005 film Black. He described the experience: "I was getting beaten up, abused, doing everything from cleaning the floor to fixing the lights from 7 am to 4 am, but I was learning every day." Kapoor later confessed that his main motive for working on Black was to ensure that Bhansali liked him enough to cast him as an actor for his next project.