Ashutosh Gowariker was so impressed with him that he sent him 6 SMSs on his cellphone as soon as he had seen his first film. One of the messages expressed the celebrated director’s heartfelt regret that he didn’t have a worthwhile role to cast the hero in his new film, Swades.

Another top director, Karan Johar, telephoned the actor after he saw the teenage love story which starred him and announced that he was a "welcome addition to the industry". Hrithik Roshan congratulated him and praised his work.

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What was exhilarating for the debutant was that before the SMSs and the telephone calls, he had never met the three celebrities.

The icing on the cake came in the form of the paying public seconding what the industry people had felt about the new hero. Shahid Kapur had arrived! He was the new kid on the block, the tour de force of Ishq Vishk. Given all this, it would sound unbelievabe that Shahid was rejected the first time he met director Ken Ghosh for the lead role in this film.

"But that was because I was such a bachchu then," he reasons out. When you point out that he is still a bachchu, he gives his dimpled smile and quickly points out the difference, "Now, I’ve grown up. I even have a stubble to prove that. The first time I met Ken, I was so thin and puny. I used to shave but that was more to get a kick out of having graduated from being a boy to becoming a man. Otherwise, I didn’t have much hair on my face as such."

The boy’s innocence is what stood out in the film and it is the same innocence that bowls you over when you meet him at 11.40 a.m. for a 11 o’clock interview in his modest flat at Versova. You are running late and want to inform him that you’d be reaching in a while but are shocked to be told by the servant at 11.15 that "sahab to so rahe hain."

The cliched statement makes you wonder if Shahid has already learnt the wily ways of the industry in which stars are always either sleeping or are in the bathroom - thank God, not both together! When you reach his home, you catch the actor sipping his morning cup of tea.

"Oh, did my servant say that to you?" he asks and almost immediately adds, "I must tell him not to give such put-offish replies on the phone." He then goes on to explain that he had, in fact, been sleeping till a few minutes back but that’s because "I was awake till 4 in the morning. I was at a story-sitting. You know how it is, drinks and all that."

Before you can ask him anything, the 22-year old half-Hindu-half-Muslim clarifies, "The producer and his team were drinking. I don’t drink. I use religion as a nice excuse and tell people offering me alcohol, that it’s for religious reasons that I don’t consume alcohol. And it works. After that, nobody forces me to drink," laughs Shahid with the glee of a child who thinks he has had his way by fooling his mom who actually knows it all.

Acting is in Shahid’s blood because both, his dad and mom, Pankaj Kapur and Neelima Azim, are actors in their own right. The one to spot the spark, however, was music company Tips’ boss, Ramesh Taurani. Recalls Shahid, "Ramesh-ji saw my music video and asked me to see him. He sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do. When I replied that I wanted to become an actor, he told me that he saw a bright future for me. He also added that he wasn’t promising me any film then, but he asked me to handle my fledling career with care and advised me against taking hasty decisions or making the wrong career moves. He told me, I was too young to face the movie camera then and asked me to work out."

About a year later, Ramesh Taurani gave Shahid a break in Ishq Vishk, directed by Ken. How did the director agree to cast Shahid although he had turned him down the first time? "When I met him the second time, I had worked a lot on my physique. Plus, I had grown in age too," reasons the actor who still remembers his first cheque which Taurani gave him.

"It was for Rs. 50,000, my signing amount," he fondly recalls. "But it was not about money. The thrill was that I was being launched as an actor," says the first year Arts college dropout who started his schooling in Delhi’s Gyan Bharti and completed it in Bombay at Bhavans’ Rajhans Vidyalaya. Before being introduced in Ishq Vishk, Shahid had also assisted his dad in the direction of television serials Mohandas B.A. LL.B. and Drushtant.