Slumdog star: I’m not British or Indian enough for roles
DEV PATEL, the actor, has said he feels “not British enough to be fully British” and “not Indian enough to be fully Indian” for certain parts as he admitted he was “fixated” on his race.
The 31-year-old told The Observer that, after starring in Slumdog Millionaire, he would “wait for an Indian role to come by, where I could put on a thick accent” as “there wasn’t anything else, it was literally the clichés: goofy sidekick, taxi driver”.
Patel said Freida Pinto, his co-star in the 2008 film and his former girlfriend, was also being typecast “as this exotic beauty next to all these Caucasian leading men”.
He added that he became “fixated” on the ethnicity of his character in The Personal History of David Copperfield, in which he “basically plays Charles Dickens”.
He said he asked director Armando Iannucci: “Wait, so is his mum going to be brown? How are we going to talk about that? Is there going to be, like, a scene where they, like, arrive on a boat?” He said he had known Iannucci would “face a barrage of comments” for casting him in the role.
However, he added that “the very essence of acting” is “for you to perform, transform, change, that’s the allure of the job”.
“And sometimes I feel stuck in this cultural no-man’s land,” he said. “I’m not British enough to be fully British, not Indian enough to be fully Indian.”
Patel added that the film industry was “moving in the right direction” in terms of diversity, adding: “My mate Daniel Kaluuya just won an Oscar.”
“And there are so many beautiful films in the mix now,” he said.
“We’re getting more nourished as a society for it.”