Born on 15th January 1982 in Mumbai, the grandson of late singer Mukesh, with his drop dead gorgeous looks he could easily have been the No. 1 lover boy in Bollywood. However, he chose to wait and debuted with Sriram Raghavan's thriller Johnny Gaddar where he played the role of Vikram, a role with negative shades. For some this would have been considered professional suicide but Neil Nitin Mukesh won rave reviews for the role and has notched up quite a good variety of films for the future, including Sudhir Mishra's Tera Kya Hoga Johnny and Jail with Madhur Bhandarkar, which has just been announced.

Like many others with a filmi background, he too had faced the camera as a child actor, when he played the role of Govinda as a child in 'Jaise Karni Waise Bharni' in 1989, he was appreciated more than Govinda and that left an impression on his mind.

Always focused on his career he did a 4-month workshop with Kishore Namit Kapoor and also at Anupam Kher's institute, during vacations and also assisted Aditya Chopra in 'Mujhse Dosti Karoge', when he was still in HR College studying B.Com. He got a number of film offers but he says he didn't want to debut with a love story.