Khatter is the son of actors Neelima Azeem and Rajesh Khattar. Through his mother he belongs to the family of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, a writer and film director.[3] His half-brother, Shahid Kapoor, is Azeem's son from her first marriage to actor Pankaj Kapur.[4][5] Khatter describes himself as someone who is proud of his middle class values.[6] He explains that he grew up in a household rich in culture, cinema, and the performing arts, and that he worked towards developing himself as an artiste.[6] Khatter was educated at Jamnabai Narsee School and Billabong High International School, Juhu in Mumbai.[7] He also studied dance at Shiamak Davar's academy.[8]
After making his first screen appearance as a child in the 2005 film Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi!, starring Kapoor,[1] Khatter worked as an assistant director to Abhishek Chaubey on his film Udta Punjab (2016) and Danish Renzu on the independent film Half Widow(2017).[9]
Khatter next played the lead role in Shashank Khaitan's romantic drama Dhadak (2018), a remake of the Marathi film Sairat (2016), co-starring newcomer Janhvi Kapoor.[14][15] It tells the story of two young lovers in rural Rajasthan who face political opposition to their relationship due to caste discrimination. Uday Bhatia of Mint criticized Dhadak for lacking the depth of the original film, but found "a soulfulness to [Khatter] that's at odds with Hindi cinema's current penchant for bratty, hyperactive onscreen male personas".[16] Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express too disliked the film, but labelled Khatter a "natural" performer and took note of his "mobile, expressive face".[17] With worldwide earnings of over ₹1.1 billion (US$13million), Dhadak emerged as a commercial success.[18][19]
In 2022, Khatter featured alongside Katrina Kaif and Siddhant Chaturvedi in the comedy horror film Phone Bhoot.[25][26] Reviewers were generally unimpressed with the picture,[27] but Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV thought that the "charm and spunk" that Khatter brought to his comic role enabled him to "[walk] away with the film".[28] The following year, he started in a promotional short film for Apple Inc., titled Fursat, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj on an iPhone 14 Pro.[29] In the war drama Pippa, set during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Khatter played the real-life character of army commander Balram Singh Mehta.[30] In preparation, he spent time with Mehta and attended military boot camp.[31][32] Initially scheduled for a theatrical release, it was eventually released on Amazon Prime Video after several delays.[31]Rediff.com's critic Sukanya Verma opined, "There's a hearty quality to Ishaan, but in Pippa he's trying too hard."[33]
In 2024, Khatter featured alongside an ensemble cast in The Perfect Couple, an American Netflix limited series based on Elin Hilderbrand's mystery novel of the same name.[34]Screen Rant's Mae Abdulbaki found his character's subplot to be of minimal significance to the main storyline.[35] In the upcoming Indian Netflix series, The Royals, he will star opposite Bhumi Pednekar.[36]
Media
Khatter was ranked by The Times of India in their "Most Desirable Men" listings at No. 27 in 2018,[37] at No. 32 in 2019,[38] at No. 25 in 2020.[39]
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