Ishaan Khatter

 ( 1995 Births ) 

After making his first screen appearance as a child in the 2005 film Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi!, starring Kapoor, Khatter worked as an assistant director to Abhishek Chaubey on his film Udta Punjab (2016) and Danish Renzu on the independent film Half Widow (2017).

Khatter next played the lead role in Shashank Khaitan's romantic drama Dhadak (2018), a remake of the Marathi cinema film Sairat (2016), co-starring newcomer Janhvi Kapoor. It tells the story of two young lovers in rural Rajasthan who face political opposition to their relationship due to caste discrimination. Uday Bhatia of Mint criticized Dhadak for lacking the depth of the original film, but found "a soulfulness to Khatter that's at odds with Hindi cinema's current penchant for bratty, hyperactive onscreen male personas". Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express too disliked the film, but labelled Khatter a "natural" performer and took note of his "mobile, expressive face". With worldwide earnings of over , Dhadak emerged as a commercial success.

In 2020, Khatter starred in the British miniseries A Suitable Boy, Mira Nair's adaptation of Vikram Seth's novel of the same name, in which he was paired opposite Tabu. It aired in six parts on BBC One. He was drawn to the project due to its depiction of an older woman-young man romance, which he hoped would challenge social stigma of such relationships. Hugo Rifkind of The Times found Khatter to be "suitably charismatic and dangerous" in his part. That same year, he starred alongside Ananya Panday in the action film Khaali Peeli, which due to COVID-19 pandemic was released digitally on Zee Plex.

In 2022, Khatter featured alongside Katrina Kaif and Siddhant Chaturvedi in the comedy horror film Phone Bhoot. Reviewers were generally unimpressed with the picture, but Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV thought that the "charm and spunk" that Khatter brought to his comic role enabled him to "walk away with the film". The following year, he started in a promotional short film for Apple Inc., titled Fursat, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj on an iPhone 14 Pro. In the war drama Pippa, set during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Khatter played the real-life character of army commander Balram Singh Mehta. In preparation, he spent time with Mehta and attended military boot camp. Initially scheduled for a theatrical release, it was eventually released on Amazon Prime Video after several delays. Rediff.com's critic Sukanya Verma opined, "There's a hearty quality to Ishaan, but in Pippa he's trying too hard."

In 2024, Khatter featured alongside an ensemble cast in The Perfect Couple, an American Netflix limited series based on Elin Hilderbrand's mystery novel of the same name. Screen Rant's Mae Abdulbaki found his character's subplot to be of minimal significance to the main storyline. In the Netflix series The Royals (2025), Khatter played a reluctant heir opposite Bhumi Pednekar. Udita Jhunjhunwala of Scroll.in criticised the objectification of Khatter and dismissed the chemistry between him and Pednekar. He will next star alongside Vishal Jethwa in Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound, which premiered at the 2025

In 2025, Khatter starred in Homebound, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. The film received a nine-minute standing ovation at its debut screening. Following its Cannes success, the film was selected for the Gala Presentations section at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. The film received critical acclaim; Variety noted that “Khatter and Jethwa put on immensely endearing and unpredictable performances.”

Santanu Das of Hindustan Times called it “deeply empathetic,” and praised Khatter’s performance as “affecting and powerful.”