Why The World Is Loving Dev Patel?

Few actors seemed to get more attention at the Oscars this year than Dev Patel, who rocked up to the red carpet fresh off his BAFTA win for his stirring performance in Lion. Through the ceremony, the cameras were trained on the actor (his clowning around with co-star kid Sunny Pawar briefly broke the internet on this glitziest of nights), a marker of his rapid ascension in the Hollywood pecking order. Yet Patel, who came into the spotlight for his role in Slumdog Millionaire, could have been a onehit wonder.

- Lauren Larson

Instead, after critically acclaimed performances in The Newsroom, The Man Who Knew Infinity and the buzzy Lion, it’s clear the 26-year-old actor is among Hollywood’s hottest new leading men in October last year, Dev Patel, 26, strolled into the Odeon Theater in London with his mother, father, sister and grandparents in tow. Patel’s face (“my goofy mug”) was on posters all over Leicester Square. Just eight years earlier, a pre-Slumdog Millionaire Patel had waited in the same square for Will Smith to emerge after the premiere of Hancock. He was hoping to catch a glimpse of Smith, or maybe even score an autograph.

Patel was at the Odeon for the London premiere of his new film, Lion, based on the true story of Saroo Brierley. Brierley was raised by an Australian couple after being separated from his mother and brother in a small village in India as a young boy. As an adult, Brierley became consumed by a desire to find his family, spending hours searching huge swaths of India on Google Earth to see if he recognised any landmarks. It’s tempting to compare Lion to Slumdog Millionaire – both begin with a child, lost and alone on the streets of India, who grows up to be Dev Patel – but the parallels stop there.