Dev Patel (born 23 April 1990) is a British actor and film-maker of Indian descent. He became famous at eighteen as the lead in Slumdog Millionaire, was nominated for an Academy Award for Lion, and in 2024 directed his first film, the action thriller Monkey Man.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Dev Patel |
| Born | 23 April 1990, Harrow, London, England |
| Age | 36 |
| Nationality | British |
| Indian roots | Gujarati Hindu parents, both born in Nairobi, Kenya |
| Education | Whitmore High School, Harrow |
| Occupation | Actor, director, producer |
| Notable films | Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Lion, The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Green Knight, Monkey Man |
| Awards | BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor (2017) |
| Partner | Tilda Cobham-Hervey |
Early Life
He was born in Harrow, in north-west London. His parents, Raju, an IT consultant, and Anita, a care worker, are Gujarati Hindus who were born in Nairobi and came to Britain in their teens.
An energetic child, he was enrolled in taekwondo at ten, reached black belt and won a bronze medal at a world junior championship in Dublin in 2004. A school performance of Twelfth Night won him an acting prize.
Career
Skins
In 2006 his mother saw an advertisement for open auditions for a television drama about teenagers and took him along the day before a science examination. He was cast as Anwar in Skins, which began in 2007. He had no training as an actor.
Slumdog Millionaire
The daughter of the director Danny Boyle suggested him for the lead in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), as Jamal, a boy from the Mumbai slums who wins a television quiz. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best picture.
The years after
Good parts for a young British Asian actor were scarce, and he has spoken of being offered a succession of stereotypes. He appeared in:
- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and its sequel, as the hopeful young manager of a hotel in Jaipur
- the television series The Newsroom
- The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), as the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan
Lion
In Lion (2016) he played Saroo Brierley, who was lost as a small child in India, adopted in Australia, and found his birth mother twenty-five years later using satellite maps. The performance won him the BAFTA for best supporting actor and nominations for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Leading man
He followed it with Hotel Mumbai (2018), about the 2008 attack on the Taj hotel; the title role in The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019); and Sir Gawain in The Green Knight (2021).
Director
He co-wrote, directed and starred in Monkey Man (2024), a revenge thriller set in a fictional Indian city and drawing on the legend of Hanuman. He broke his hand during the shoot, which was moved to Indonesia because of the pandemic. Abandoned by its first distributor, the film was rescued by the director Jordan Peele and released in cinemas to good reviews. He has since starred in the folk horror film Rabbit Trap.
Personal Life
He was in a relationship with his Slumdog Millionaire co-star Freida Pinto for about six years. Since 2017 his partner has been the Australian actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey, whom he met while filming Hotel Mumbai; they live in Adelaide. In 2022 he was reported to have stepped in to break up a knife fight outside a shop there.
Featured image: Dev Patel at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2016. Photo by Gordon Correll, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
