Early life and work Bhat was born in
Srinagar,
Jammu and Kashmir, India into a
Kashmiri Pandit family. Bhat began his career as a fashion model. In 1998, he participated in the
Graviera Mr. India contest, where he won the Mr Photogenic award. He did advertisements for
Pond's and
Breeze detergent, and appeared in music videos like "Soni Lag Gayee" with Pakistani singer
Sajjad Ali, and "Punjabi Munda" for
Tips Industries. Bhat had his first film role in the romantic drama
Yeh Mohabbat Hai in 2002, directed by
Umesh Mehra. The film was not well received, but Priyanka Bhattacharya of
Rediff.com found him “sincere” and
Taran Adarsh of
Bollywood Hungama opined that he had made a “decent debut”. The following year, he starred in the comedy
Nayee Padosan, in which he played dual roles of a Tamil man and a don. Disillusioned with the kind of roles he was being offered, Bhat took a sabbatical from acting. He instead began his own production company Filmtonic Entertainment, under which he produced television soap operas such as
Meri Doli Tere Angana (2007–2008),
Chhukar Mere Man Ko (2007), and
Tum Dena Saath Mera (2009). He has said about this period, "I quit acting because I was angry. I did not want to do B and C grade projects. I wanted to work on good scripts and with committed filmmakers. But nothing came my way and that made me unhappy." The filmmaker
Anurag Kashyap approached Bhat to play the part of a struggling actor whose daughter is kidnapped in his thriller film
Ugly (2013). To prepare for his role, Bhat started consuming alcohol heavily and deprived himself of sleep to create dark circles around his character's face. For a sequence, where Bhat had to cry, Kashyap kept talking to him for three hours and he eventually broke down and wept. The camera kept rolling during that period.
Ugly premiered in the
Directors' Fortnight section of the
2013 Cannes Film Festival where it received standing ovation. It was also screened at the
New York Indian Film Festival and the
Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Arunava Chatterjee of
India Today called
Ugly a "pathbreaking crime fiction" and found Bhat to be “outstanding” in it. Brian Clark of
Screen Anarchy added that Bhat "does especially impressive work transitioning his character through some demanding plot twists and power shifts". Three years later in 2016, Bhat played a role opposite
Katrina Kaif in the romantic drama
Fitoor and alongside
Priyanka Chopra in the crime film
Jai Gangaajal. In a review for the latter film, Srijana Mitra Das of
The Times of India wrote that even in a small role, he had played his character's "radicalism with aplomb". The following year, Bhat had a leading role in
Union Leader, an Indian-Canadian drama about a chemical factory supervisor who raises the issue of worker's health and safety against an unsympathetic management.
Anna M. M. Vetticad wrote that Bhat had brought an "X factor to his performance" which exceeded the screenplay's limitations. Bhat starred in
Sudhir Mishra’s romantic drama
Daas Dev (2018), a retelling of
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel
Devdas set in the political landscape of Uttar Pradesh, in which he played the lead role opposite
Aditi Rao Hydari and
Richa Chaddha. In 2019, he appeared alongside Chaddha and
Akshaye Khanna in the courtroom drama
Section 375. He played a Bollywood director accused of rape.
Rajeev Masand wrote that he “does well as the arrogant director”. In 2021, Bhat starred in
Man Naked, an experimental single-shot short film. Bhat reunited with Anurag Kashyap in 2022, in
Dobaaraa, a remake of the Spanish mystery film
Mirage, starring
Taapsee Pannu.
Anupama Chopra found Bhat's to be the "most notable character" in the film and added that his "frayed good looks and exhausted manner infuse a much-needed comic edge into the film". He collaborated once again with Kashyap in the crime film
Kennedy, which premiered at the
2023 Cannes Film Festival. Bhat starred in
Netflix thriller series
Black Warrant in 2025, playing DSP Rajesh Tomar, a senior jailer at
Tihar jail.
Shubhra Gupta of
The Indian Express termed it his most "worthy role" since
Ugly.
Scroll.in's Nandini Ramnath wrote that he "superbly portrays Tomar’s concentrated perversion". ==Filmography==