Actor Dev Patel was in Dubai on Tuesday to be honoured as one of the Chivas Icons at the H Hotel venue Play. The 27-year-old has been having a very good year.
The Brit earned a best supporting actor Academy Award nomination for his turn in the real-life tale Lion, in which he portrayed Saroo Brierly, who was adopted by an Australian family after he was lost in India as a little boy and later used Google Earth to find his home.
Patel first shot to fame in the 2008 Best Picture Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire and has wrapped his latest film Hotel Mumbai, based on the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
He spoke to The National about the Chivas Icons honour, his charity work through the film’s #LionHeart campaign, becoming tabloid fodder and working on that Indian accent.
A Chivas Icon at 27? What does this mean to you? How does it feel?
It’s really exciting actually. The calibre of talent that Chivas has worked with before [Sir Patrick Stewart has been among the honorees], and just the opportunity to sit down in front of a bunch of incredibly influential people tonight and talk about this campaign, the #LionHeart campaign [which supports 11 million children who live on the streets and another 80,000 who go missing every year in India], which is really important to me. The film has changed my life so it’s really important to try and raise awareness and funds for the three charities within that umbrella [Magic Bus; Childline India and Railway Children India] is amazing.
Have you made trips to India? Have you met with the charities?
I met a lot of the heads of charities on the press tour, when we started the campaign, me and Nicole [Kidman] and we started a competition where they could come and meet us at events, we started a crowd funding. I’ve been to India and shot five films so I’m very aware of this situation. So while preparing for the role I got to go and visit orphanages and it really was kind of a nourishing and heartbreaking experience. You leave there driven to do the role justice because that’s all you can do as an actor. You put it into the work.
Lion changed your life professionally, how did it change your life personally?
I think what it does is it pushes you out of your comfort zone and you’re colliding with people you’ve never met before and it broadens your perspective of the world and makes you a more conscious human being, a more sensitive human being. Even just meeting the actual family, I met Kumla, who is Saroo’s Indian mother. I don’t speak Hindi, so we don’t share the same language but we sat there and held hands for awhile while her and Priyanka [Bose], the woman playing her on the screen spoke, and we just cried together at one point and moments like that, they really instil you with a determination. Same with Sue [Brierly, Saroo’s adopted mother, played by Kidman], she is a beautiful, beautiful soul. Just going around the world and listening to her talk, she’s special.
Do you stay in touch with the people depicted in Lion?
Saroo texts me once in awhile. He’s cool. He’s an absolute firecracker. And I’m very grateful to him for opening up to me and really exposing himself so that I could go into some dark places as him on the screen. It’s trippy, isn’t it?
Now that you have a bit of distance from your second Academy Awards, how are you looking at the experience?

Source: The National