Dismayed by the critical response to Student of the Year, Bhatt was keen to play a better role.

She found it in Imtiaz Ali's road

film Highway (2014), in which she starred as a young woman from a wealthy family who, after being abducted, devel-
ops Stockholm syndrome towards her captor (played by Randeep Hooda).[22] She took diction lessons to improve her Hindi, and
was challenged by the emotional and physical requirements of the part.[32] Ali shot the film sequentially and several scenes were
improvised on set based on Bhatt's reactions.[33] She has said that several aspects of her character's journey mirrored her own,
as it was the first time she experienced situations that were different from her own privileged upbringing.[22] Ronnie Scheib
of Variety took note of her "endearingly cockeyed perf" and commended her for "bringing an underlying sadness and wistful in-
telligence" to her part.[34] The film underperformed at the box office,[35] though Bhatt won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best
Actress and also gained a Best Actress nomination at the ceremony.[36] She next appeared in Vikas Bahl's short film on women's
safety, entitled Going Home.[37]
Continuing her collaboration with Johar's company, Dharma Productions, Bhatt starred in the romantic films 2
States and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (both 2014).[38] The former was an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat's novel of the same
name, and is about two management students who have trouble convincing their parents of their relationship. For her role as a
headstrong Tamil girl, she learnt to speak her lines in Tamil with help from a tutor.[39] Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express was
appreciative of Bhatt, labelling her a "surprise" and "easy and fresh and natural".[40] She played a Punjabi girl who has an affair
before her wedding, in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, directed by Shashank Khaitan, which was described as a tribute to Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) by Johar.[41] Writing for India Today, Rohit Khilnani thought that Bhatt had pitched in "one of her
best performances so far", though Nandini Ramnath of Mint found her lacking in subtlety, writing that she was "more comfort-
able acting out her feelings through dialogue and actions".[42][43] Both films were commercially successful, each earning over ₹1
billion (US$13 million) worldwide.[31] Her accomplishments in 2014 established her career.[44][45][46]
Bhatt reunited with Bahl for the romantic comedy Shaandaar. Released in 2015, the film features Shahid Kapoor and Bhatt as
insomniacs who fall in love during a destination wedding.[47] Kunal Guha of Mumbai Mirror criticised the film and wrote that Bhatt
"socks life into her character but fails to pump any into this film".[48] The film did not perform well commercially.[49]

Career progression (2016–2021)

Bhatt at an event for Udta Punjab in 2016

Bhatt began 2016 with a supporting role in Shakun Batra's ensemble drama Kapoor & Sons, starring alongside Malhotra
and Fawad Khan, which was a critical and commercial success.[50] She next took on the part of a poor Bihari migrant in Udta
Punjab (2016), a crime drama about substance abuse from writer-director Abhishek Chaubey. The intense role marked a depar-
ture from the mostly light-hearted parts she had played before, and in preparation, she watched documentaries on drug abuse
and learned to speak a Bihari dialect.[51] The film generated controversy when the Central Board of Film Certification deemed that
it represented Punjab in a negative light and demanded extensive censorship before its release.[52] The Bombay High Court later
cleared the film for exhibition with one scene cut.[53] Bhatt's performance was critically acclaimed.[54] Raja Sen of Rediff.com wrote
that she "commits to her accent and deals with the film's most unsavoury section, and is stunning during an incendiary speech
that elevates the entire film to a whole other level."[55] She next played a troubled young woman who consults with a therapist
(played by Shah Rukh Khan) in Gauri Shinde's coming-of-age film Dear Zindagi (2016). Writing for IndieWire, Anisha Jhaveri
commended her for providing millennial angst with "a three-dimensionality".[56] Udta Punjab and Dear Zindagi gained Bhatt
awards attention; for the former, she won the Screen Award and the Filmfare Award for Best Actress, and for the latter, she re-
ceived an additional Best Actress nomination at Filmfare.[57][58][59]
The series of successful films continued with her next project—the romantic comedy Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017)—which re-
united her with Khaitan and Dhawan.[60] It tells the story of an independent young woman (Bhatt) who refuses to conform to patri-
archal expectations from her chauvinistic fiancée (Dhawan). Rachel Saltz of The New York Times took note of the film's state-
ment on gender equality and wrote, "Without ever falling into the clichés of spunky Bollywood heroine, [Bhatt] effortlessly em-
bodies that admirable thing: a modern woman."[61] She received another Filmfare nomination for Best Actress.[62] Meghna Gulzar's
espionage thriller Raazi (2018) starred Bhatt as Sehmat Khan, a Kashmiri spy married to a Pakistani army officer. Set during
the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the film is an adaptation of Harinder Sikka's novel Calling Sehmat.[63][64] Anna M. M.
Vetticad of Firstpost found Bhatt to be "stupendous" in the role, adding that "the young star once again displaying the maturity
and confidence of a veteran on camera".[65] Raazi proved to be one of the highest-grossing female-led Hindi films, and its suc-
cess led Box Office India to credit Bhatt as the most successful contemporary actress of Hindi cinema.[66][67] She won another
Best Actress award at Filmfare.[68]
Bhatt launched her own production company named Eternal Sunshine Productions in early 2019.[69] Her first appearance that
year was opposite Ranveer Singh in Zoya Akhtar's Gully Boy, a musical inspired by the life of the street rap-
pers Divine and Naezy.[70] She attended acting workshops to learn a ghetto dialect to enable her to improvise on set.[71] The film
premiered at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival.[72] Writing for Screen International, Lee Marshall opined that "it's Bhatt's
sharp performance that carries most successfully the mix of wry humour, romance and social comment that Gully Boy essays".
[73]
With global earnings of over ₹2.37 billion (US$30 million), the film emerged as Bhatt's highest-grossing release to that point.
[74]
Gully Boy won a record 13 Filmfare Awards, and Bhatt was awarded with her career's third Best Actress trophy.[75]
The ensemble period drama Kalank (2019) marked Bhatt's biggest-budget film to that point.[76] Set in the 1940s prior to
the partition of India, it featured Dhawan and her as star-crossed lovers. She watched the films Mughal-e-Azam (1960)
and Umrao Jaan (1981) to learn the body language of women from the era; to better her Urdu-speaking skills, she watched the
Pakistani television series Zindagi Gulzar Hai.[77] Shubhra Gupta bemoaned that she was "watchable, if increasingly, exasperat-
ingly familiar".[78] The film did not perform well at the box office.[79] Bhatt next starred in Sadak 2 (2020), a sequel to her father's
crime film Sadak (1991), which due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India could not be released theatrically and instead streamed
on Disney+ Hotstar.[80] The death of Sushant Singh Rajput sparked a debate on nepotism in the Hindi film industry; his fans
blamed Bhatt for being one of the beneficiaries of nepotism and for once speaking dismissively of Rajput on Johar's chat
show Koffee with Karan.[81] This led to vote brigading on the film's trailer on YouTube, on which it became the second most-
disliked video.[82][83] The film received negative reviews, and Pallabi Dey Purkayastha of The Times of India dismissed Bhatt's per-
formance "by her own high standards" to be "strictly average".[84][85]