Rajkummar Rao Biography: Age, Height, Wife, Movies & Stree 2 Records

Nobody handed Rajkummar Rao a head start in Mumbai. He had no industry surname, no uncle running a production house, and zero interest in leaning on traditional hero mannerisms. What he had instead was obsessive discipline, an ear for dialects, and a willingness to look raw, desperate, or completely unglamorous whenever a script demanded it.

That gamble paid off. When Dibakar Banerjee put him in front of a digital camera for Love Sex Aur Dhokha in 2010, critics immediately noticed the intensity. Three years later, his quiet, devastating portrayal of human rights lawyer Shahid Azmi in Hansal Mehta’s Shahid won him the National Film Award for Best Actor. He took Newton to the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017 and watched it become India’s official entry for the 90th Academy Awards. Then came 2024. Reprising his role as Vicky the Chanderi tailor in Stree 2, Rao fronted a runaway blockbuster that swept past ₹600 crore net in domestic box-office earnings—shattering records to stand among the highest-grossing Hindi films ever made.

Gurugram Roots, Mandi House Theatre, and FTII

Home was Prem Nagar in Gurgaon. Sixteen people packed into a single joint family residence, sharing meals, chores, and everyday worries. His father Satyapal worked as an employee in the Haryana state revenue department; his mother Kamlesh took care of the household. Cinema was something you watched on holidays, not a realistic livelihood.

He took up taekwondo early, won a national gold medal, and learned how to carry his frame with balanced control. School plays at Blue Bells Model School and S.N. Sidheshwar Senior Secondary convinced him where he actually belonged. After finishing school, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts program at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College (ARSD College) at Delhi University.

Most of his actual education happened off-campus. Rao spent his afternoons and evenings rehearsing with the Kshitij Repertory and attending workshops at the Shri Ram Centre near Mandi House. Delhi stagecraft broke whatever self-consciousness he carried. Watching Manoj Bajpayee on screen showed him that an ordinary face from north India could hold the screen on pure nerve and craft. By 2006, he had auditioned for and entered the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. Two intensive years of voice culture, Stanislavski methods, and international cinema followed until his graduation in 2008.

The Audition Circuit, Shahid, and Indie Breakthroughs

Mumbai in 2008 was brutal. Rao lived in cramped suburban apartments, splitting groceries, riding local trains to Aram Nagar, and getting turned away because casting directors thought he looked like an extra. His break came from a newspaper notice: Dibakar Banerjee was searching for fresh faces for Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010). Rao dropped nearly six kilos within four weeks to play Adarsh, the supermarket supervisor caught in a sleazy hidden-camera scheme. His performance felt uncomfortable because it was completely convincing.

Anurag Kashyap noticed. He handed Rao the role of Shamshad Alam in Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 (2012), for which Rao travelled through small-town Bihar and Jharkhand to pick up speech cadences firsthand. Then came Abhishek Kapoor’s Kai Po Che! (2013). Playing the cautious, business-first Govind Patel alongside Sushant Singh Rajput and Amit Sadh, Rao earned his first Filmfare Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

His true inflection point arrived when Hansal Mehta handed him the lead in Shahid (2013). The film told the story of Shahid Azmi, a former detainee who became a tireless human rights attorney defending marginalized youth before being murdered in his office in 2010. Rao read through legal files, sat silently in Mumbai trial courts, and spent hours talking with Azmi’s family. When the film premiered at Toronto, it received standing ovations. The 61st National Film Awards confirmed what viewers already knew: Rajkummar Rao had won the National Film Award for Best Actor.

He refused easy paychecks. In 2014, he played the insecure, judgmental groom opposite Kangana Ranaut in Queen. In Aligarh (2015), he played a journalist probing societal hypocrisy. For Vikramaditya Motwane’s survival thriller Trapped (2016), he starved himself on carrots and coffee to portray a clerk locked inside a high-rise flat with no food, electricity, or water. In 2017, he teamed with Amit V. Masurkar for Newton, playing an upright, unyielding election official assigned to an isolated polling booth in Bastar. The film earned him the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Actor and was chosen as India’s official entry for the 90th Academy Awards.

Horror-Comedy Gold and the Stree 2 Record Run

For years, film trade commentators branded him an arthouse darling who could not sell mass tickets. Amar Kaushik’s 2018 horror-comedy Stree blew that argument apart. Starring alongside Pankaj Tripathi and Shraddha Kapoor, Rao played Vicky, an earnest ladies’ tailor whose deadpan comic rhythm helped turn an experimental concept into a ₹180-crore global hit.

His versatility widened further. He won a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor playing Pritam Vidrohi in Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017), snapping back and forth between a timid salesman and an aggressive street tough. In Badhaai Do (2022), he took on Shardul Thakur, a closeted police inspector navigating a lavender marriage with Bhumi Pednekar, winning the Filmfare Award for Best Actor in the popular category. He held his ground in Anurag Basu’s crime puzzle Ludo alongside Sanya Malhotra, and delivered a meticulous, physically observant portrait of visually impaired entrepreneur Srikanth Bolla in Srikanth (2024).

Then Stree 2 arrived in August 2024. Teaming up again with Pankaj Tripathi, Rao anchored the narrative as Chanderi faced the headless Sarkata. The film did not just perform well; it demolished the Hindi domestic box-office record books, collecting over ₹600 crore net across India and topping ₹870 crore globally. Much like his peer Vikrant Massey, Rao proved that grounding yourself in real characters is not a commercial handicap—it can be the strongest hook an actor possesses.

Personal Life, Marriage to Patralekhaa, and Family

Rao has kept his personal life out of the tabloids. He met actress Patralekhaa Paul in 2010 when both were carving out their careers in Mumbai. They co-starred in Hansal Mehta’s CityLights in 2014 and worked together again in 2024 on the suspense series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. On 15 November 2021, after eleven years together, they married at the Oberoi Sukhvilas in New Chandigarh.

Four years to the day after their wedding, on 15 November 2025, they announced the birth of their daughter, sharing a simple statement on social media. Rao is a vegetarian who maintains his physical shape through calisthenics, functional circuits, and martial arts.

In 2014, around the release of Queen, his screen credit changed from Raj Kumar Yadav to Rajkummar Rao. He explained that both Yadav and Rao are legitimate family surnames. The second ‘m’ in ‘Rajkummar’ came directly from his mother Kamlesh, who believed in numerology. His mother died in March 2016 while he was shooting Newton in the forests of Chhattisgarh; his father Satyapal passed away three years later in September 2019.

Rajkummar Rao Social Media Presence & Verified Accounts

Rajkummar Rao connects directly with followers through verified handles on Instagram and X. He does not run an official personal Facebook profile and has publicly warned his fans about unverified impersonator accounts on that network.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rajkummar Rao

Question: How tall is Rajkummar Rao?

Answer: Rajkummar Rao stands 175 cm tall, which equals 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 metres) in standard physical conversions.

Question: What was Rajkummar Rao’s original birth name?

Answer: He was born Raj Kumar Yadav. In 2014, he adopted Rao, an existing family surname, and added an extra ‘m’ to his first name honoring his mother’s faith in numerology.

Question: How old is Rajkummar Rao today?

Answer: Born on 31 August 1984 in Gurugram, Haryana, Rajkummar Rao is 42 years old as of November 2026.

Question: Who is Rajkummar Rao’s wife?

Answer: He is married to actress Patralekhaa Paul. The pair married on 15 November 2021 in Chandigarh after eleven years together, and they had a daughter in November 2025.

Question: Which film brought Rajkummar Rao a National Film Award?

Answer: He won the National Film Award for Best Actor for his performance as human rights lawyer Shahid Azmi in Hansal Mehta’s 2013 biographical drama Shahid.

Question: What is Rajkummar Rao’s verified net worth?

Answer: While celebrity portals estimate his net worth between ₹60 crore and ₹100 crore, Rajkummar Rao does not publish personal wealth disclosures, and no audited financial filings verify his private assets.