Stars in the city: Shahid Kapoor, Ileana D'Cruz

It was a fun-filled affair when the lead actors of Phata Poster Nikla Hero visited HT House on Saturday afternoon. The thrilled winners of HT City’s Stars in the City contest from coming to HT House to meet actors Shahid Kapoor and Ileana D’Cruz.

It was a fun-filled affair when the lead actors of Phata Poster Nikla Hero visited HT House on Saturday afternoon.

The thrilled winners of HT City’s Stars in the City contest from coming to HT House to meet actors Shahid Kapoor and Ileana D’Cruz. The stars, who were in the city to promote their upcoming film, Phata Poster Nikla Hero, interacted with the winners, shook a leg with fans and answered all their questions.

While Shahid cleared the air about his younger brother Ishaan’s plans to become an actor, Ileana spoke about the differences in the working style of Bollywood and the Tamil film industry.

The fans went crazy, with young girls waiting on the streets for more than three hours to catch a glimpse of actor Shahid Kapoor, who was at the Hindustan Times House on Saturday afternoon to promote his upcoming film, Phata Poster Nikla Hero. But only the selected winners of the HT City Stars in the City contest got to meet the star, as well his co-star Ileana D’cruz.

As a pleasant change to the norm of stars arriving late for promotional events, the actors reached on time to interact with their fans. The session, conducted by HT City editor Sonal Kalra, saw a lot of dance and masti, with the fans getting a chance to ask questions to the stars and even get clicked with them. Dressed in a casual white shirt and trousers, Shahid was a complete sport who graciously obliged all requests by the fans — from teaching them his dance moves in the song, 'Agal Bagal', singing a few lines from the same number, or even doing push-ups!

When a fan asked him does he only want to date girls from the film industry, the 32-year-old actor replied that he didn’t want to limit his choice of a life partner to only heroines. “Why should I be only dating heroines? It’s people’s perception that if you are from the film industry, you would be interested only in an actress. There are many nice girls in the world who might not belong to Bollywood. So why should I limit my choices?” he said.

Ileana, who debuted opposite actor Ranbir Kapoor, said that Shahid is a bigger prankster compared to the Barfi! star. “While Ranbir does mischief with a straight face so I don’t realise who’s the culprit till at least an hour later, Shahid’s face gives away what he is up to,” she said.

Having played the role of a serious Bengali woman in her first film Barfi!, Ileana said that it was quite a challenge to prepare herself for this comedy film by Rajkumar Santoshi. “It’s a total mad comedy. I keep running into Vishwas Roy, a fake cop played by Shahid, to help me improve the world,” said the actor, who plays the role of a social worker in the movie.

Shahid might be playing a fake cop in the film, but his and Ileana’s chemistry certainly seemed real when the two danced to a romantic number from the film.

"I got a lot of job satisfaction while working on Barfi! But getting to do a commercial film like phata poster ... was a lot of fun," said Ileana D’Cruz.

"(brother) Ishaan is only 17. I think there’s quite some time to go before he decides whether he wants to become an actor or not," said Shahid Kapoor.