Dev Patel

Dev Patel is a British-Indian actor who first burst on the movie screen in his award-winning lead performance in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), directed by Danny Boyle, and co-starring Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan, and won eight Oscars (including best picture, director, and screenplay), and grossed an astounding $378.4 million globally on a $15 million budget.

Patel’s follow-up performance was co-starring with Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz in M. Night Shyamalan’s fantasy-adventure, The Last Airbender (2010), earning $319.7 million worldwide (on $150 million costs) for Paramount, which halted a planned franchise series after the disappointing commercial returns.

Patel co-starred with Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imre, Ronald Pickup, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith in the John Madden-directed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), providing a major hit for Fox Searchlight with a $137 million gross on $10 million expenses. Patel played a supporting role in debuting director/writer Stephen Elliott’s drama, About Cherry (2012), co-starring Ashley Hinshaw, Lili Taylor, James Franco, and Heather Graham, and was released by IFC Films after premiering at the Berlin Film Festival.

Dev Patel co-starred with Robert Sheehan, Zoë Kravitz, Robert Patrick, and Kyra Sedgwick in the American indie movie, The Road Within (2014), directed and written by Gren Wells and released by Well Go USA Entertainment. Patel co-starred in the successful sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), reuniting the original director and cast with new cast members David Strathairn and Richard Gere, and earning $86 million for Fox Searchlight.

Patel joined filmmaker Neill Blomkamp for a co-starring role in the sci-fi action movie, Chappie (2015), with Sharlto Copley, Sigourney Weaver, and Hugh Jackman, earning $102 million for distributor Sony Pictures Releasing/Columbia Pictures. Patel portrayed acclaimed Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in writer-director Matthew Brown’s biopic, The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), based on Robert Kanigel’s biography, with the supporting cast of Jeremy Irons, Devika Bhise, Toby Jones, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Northam, and Dhritiman Chatterjee, and backed by producer Ed Pressman.

Dev Patel’s first voice performance for an animated movie was in the English dub of Isao Takahata’s Studio Ghibli drama, Only Yesterday, made in 1991 and finally released by GKIDS in an English dub on the movie’s 25^th anniversary in 2016. Patel starred in his second Oscar-nominated movie in the Garth Davis-directed Lion (2016), for The Weinstein Company, and co-starring Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman, grossing a strong $140.3 million worldwide after nabbing six Oscar nominations (including Patel’s first for supporting actor, as well as best picture, supporting actress, and best-adapted screenplay).

Patel starred in the intense true-life drama-thriller, Hotel Mumbai (2018), directed by Anthony Maras, with Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, and Jason Isaacs, and released to poor box office by Bleecker Street after premiering at the Toronto film festival. Patel starred in one of his best lead performances in writer/director Michael Winterbottom’s highly-charged international thriller, The Wedding Guest (2018), with Radhika Apte and Jim Sarbh, and was released by IFC Films.

Dev Patel starred in the title role of Armando Iannucci’s Dickens adaptation, The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019), co-starring Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Morfydd Clark, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, and Ben Whishaw, and released by Searchlight Pictures after a Toronto film festival premiere. Patel’s second English-dub voice performance for an animated feature was in French animator Jérémy Clapin’s adult fantasy, I Lost My Body/J’ai perdu mon corps (2019), for which Patel performed along with Alia Shawkat, George Wendt, and Sarah Lynn Dawson, and which premiered at the Cannes film festival.

Patel showed off his big-screen star power as The Green Knight (2021), writer-director David Lowery’s acclaimed Canadian-American adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and with a cast including Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, and Sean Harris, and released by A24. After appearing in various roles in multiple shorts in Wes Anderson’s shorts series, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023 and 2024), Patel made his feature debut as a director and writer, while also starring, in Monkey Man (2024), which Jordan Peele arranged to be theatrically released via Universal Pictures.

Dev Patel starred in and was an executive producer on director/writer Bryn Chainey’s 1973 Wales-based horror movie, Rabbit Trap (date to be announced), and co-starring Rosy McEwen. Patel co-starred opposite Olivia Colman in the British seaside village tale, Wicker (date to be announced), co-directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson and co-written by Fischer, Ursula Wills-Jones, and Wilson.

Patel, in addition to his acting credits, has also served as an executive producer (with Mindy Kaling) on director/writer Nisha Pahuja’s Indian rural crime drama, To Kill A Tiger (2022), as well as the Raghuvir Joshi-directed Australian-set drama, Companion (2023).