‘They didn’t realise I was the lead’: Dev Patel on Slumdog Millionaire, The Man Who Knew Infinity, and Lion
Actor Dev Patel has come a long way since almost being snubbed at a red carpet event in 2008, and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel star’s career continues to flourish. Patel talks about his rise to stardom
As Dev Patel bounds up to the table it’s hard not to be bowled over by his boyish energy and charm. “Hi, I’m Dev,” chirps the 26-year-old Londoner, trying to make the interview process as informal as possible.
Certainly we’re used to the actor, who is of Indian heritage, bouncing around on our screens in Slumdog Millionaire and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies as well as in the underrated Chappie.
Yet we’ve never seen him be so restrained, in what he terms his first truly adult role, as Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught Indian mathematics genius in Matthew Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infinity.
“It’s interesting because there’s no real footage of Ramanujan, so there’s no aspect of mimicry, which is freeing,” Patel explains of his portrayal. “I could see from the photographs how we are very different. Ramanujan was short, stout and very dark and he was quite reclusive. His energy only came alive with mathematics, otherwise he didn’t really know how to function with the rest of the fellows.”
The film follows Ramanujan as he contacts Cambridge scholar G.H. Hardy (played by Jeremy Irons), who on a hunch invites him to England and places him under his tutelage at Trinity College in 1913.
