Do we like Alia Bhatt?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Clean on harm and decent on the good-person side, but the public record on her politics is thin and she copped criticism over Gaza.
Alia Bhatt was born in Mumbai on 15 March 1993 into a film family: her father is director Mahesh Bhatt and her mother is actress Soni Razdan. Her big break was Karan Johar's Student of the Year in 2012, which means she has spent her whole career answering the star-kid question.
The arc since then is the interesting bit. She went from light, glossy roles to heavier ones, and picked up Filmfare Best Actress awards for Udta Punjab, Raazi and Gully Boy, then a National Film Award for Gangubai Kathiawadi in 2023. She made her Hollywood debut in Heart of Stone the same year and in 2021 founded her own production house, Eternal Sunshine Productions. Variety also put her on its 2023 list of impactful international women, as the only Indian actor on it.
The messiest legal episode was a suit over Gangubai Kathiawadi. A man who described himself as the real Gangubai's adopted son sued the director, Bhatt and the book's writers in 2020, alleging the source book was defamatory and breached his privacy. That was an allegation in a suit, not a finding, and the reports I read carried no ruling against her.
On the harm test, nothing turned up in her own words or acts against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and I found no pattern of working with people who push harm. The one real criticism is that in May 2024 she was added to the online Blockout list over her silence on the Israel-Gaza war. That report carried no statement from her, so where you land depends on whether you read silence as a gap or just as a celebrity choosing not to post. She has also publicly pushed back on pile-ons over women's looks, saying we should be celebrating individuality.
The recent noise is small. At Cannes 2026 some social media users said she was getting little attention on the red carpet, and she replied to a troll in the comments with a cheeky line instead of a stoush. It's a low-stakes spat, but it shows her handling pettiness with humour.
The good stuff is real. In March 2024 she hosted her first charity event, the Hope Gala in London, raising money for the Salaam Bombay Foundation, which works with at-risk young people in India's slums. She has also returned as goodwill ambassador for the All Living Things Environmental Film Festival through her production banner.