Alia Bhatt

Bhatt was born into the Bhatt family on 15 March 1993 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. She is a daughter of Indian filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and British actress Soni Razdan. Her father is of Gujarati descent, and her mother is of Kashmiri-Pandit and German-British ancestry. Bhatt holds British citizenship. She has an elder sister, Shaheen, and two half-siblings, Pooja and Rahul Bhatt. Actor Emraan Hashmi and director Mohit Suri are her paternal cousins, while producer Mukesh Bhatt is her uncle. Educated at the Jamnabai Narsee School, Bhatt dropped out of her twelfth grade to pursue acting.

Describing her childhood, Bhatt said, "I had a rather grounded and modest upbringing. I didn't get the pleasures that people assume I would've got because I am Mahesh Bhatt's daughter." Growing up, she was not close with her father; Razdan said that she raised her children mostly as a single parent as her husband did not take much interest in their lives. Bhatt said that as a child, she "didn't miss him as such because I did not really have him", adding that they developed a closer bond only when she became an actress.

Bhatt aspired to act from a young age, saying that she first realised her interest while rehearsing for the school choir in kindergarten. She soon began dance lessons at Shiamak Davar's institute. Her first acting role was at age five in her father's production venture Sangharsh (1999), in which she briefly played the younger version of Preity Zinta's character. Talking about her experience, Bhatt later remarked that she did not remember much of it. At age nine, she auditioned for a role in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film Black (2005), but did not get the part. Three years later, Bhansali cast Bhatt opposite Ranbir Kapoor, who is 10 years her senior, to make their debuts in his film Balika Vadhu, which was shelved.