Kapoor was born into a Punjabi Hindu family in 1924 at Kapoor Haveli, a house then owned by his father, in Peshawar, North Western Frontier Province, British India(in modern-day Pakistan), to Prithviraj Kapoor and Ramsarni Devi Kapoor.
As Prithviraj moved from city to city early in his career during the 1930s, the family had to move too.