He played the role of a troubled musician in the romantic drama "Rockstar" (2011) and a cheerful deaf-and-mute man in the comedy-drama "Barfi!" (2012). He won two consecutive Best Actor awards at Filmfare for these roles. He acted with Deepika Padukone in the romantic comedy "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani" (2013). The movie established him as a leading Bollywood actor. He then acted in a series of movies that did not perform well commercially except for the romance "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" (2016). Kapoor played Sanjay Dutt in Rajkumar Hirani's biopic "Sanju" in 2018. The movie was one of the highest-earning Indian movies of all time. He won another Filmfare Award for Best Actor for this role.