9 Fascinating Facts About 'Monkey Man' Actor Dev Patel

Dev Patel is currently receiving his flowers for Monkey Man, the action-packed movie about a young underdog street fighter who is on a quest to avenge his mother's murder. The film won the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival and surpassed $10 million during its first weekend at the domestic box office. 

In an industry that has only just begun to properly appreciate South Asian talent, Patel is now commended for producing, writing, and starring in a film that, in his words, "triples down" on South Asian culture.

"I just wanted to create the film that young Dev had always wanted to see," said the actor on the Kelly Clarkson show. "When I started writing this [movie] over 10 years ago, the only roles I was getting were the comedy sidekick or the guy that "hacks the main frame" or something like that." 

He goes on to say that he wanted to be portrayed on the silver screen in the same way his film hero, Bruce Lee, was portrayed. As a child, the actor took a keen liking to martial arts and Bruce Lee's films and wanted to write his own action-packed film that told the story of the underdog. Patel then references the Hindu god Hanuman as one of his inspirations for Monkey Man's unnamed main character, who is first seen as a meek and unsuspecting boy whose true form is revealed at night when he fights at an underground fight club. 

"He [Hanuman] represents nobility, courage, and strength, but in one of the old [Hindu] stories, he's someone who forgot who he was," the Monkey Man actor explains. "He lost confidence in himself, and that, for me, was an interesting arc for an action movie." 

As Patel's Monkey Man continues to receive its deserved success, you may find that you recognize Patel from his other notable projects. He got his first big break on the silver screen by playing the lead in the Oscar-nominated film Slumdog Millionaire and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Saroo in Lion. If you happen to be a fan of British teen dramas, you may even recognize him from Skins. Whatever project you may associate the actor with, L'OFFICIEL is here to refresh your knowledge of the talented British actor. Here are nine interesting facts about Dev Patel. 

Dev Patel was born on April 23, 1990, in Harrow, London, to Indian Gujarati Hindus Anita and Raju Patel. While his parents are Indian, they were both born and raised in Kenya, as the country is home to a large Indian immigrant population. They individually immigrated to the UK when they were teenagers and met in London. According to an article written by The New York Times in 2021, his father is quiet and introverted, while his mother is a bit more outspoken. 

"She's got a big personality, and she can have the whole room laughing,” Patel said about his mother. “I think my love of playing all these characters came from her.”

Patel was raised Hindu and is said to know how to speak some Gujarati. Growing up in the Rayners Lane district of Harrow, Patel attended Longfield Primary School and Whitmore High School. In the same NYT article, the actor was described as a "hyperactive child" who spent his youth partaking in a variety of different activities, including martial arts. 

When his mom saw a casting call for the controversial British teen drama Skins, she encouraged him to audition, which eventually landed him the role of Anwar. In the show, Anwar is a young Pakistani-British boy who, regardless of being raised in an Islamic household, repeatedly breaks the rules of his religion by partaking in premarital sex, consuming pork, drinking alcohol, and consuming drugs. Anwar's penchant for being a rule-breaker is consistent with the other characters in the show, who frequently turn to vices and rule-breaking to keep themselves sane in a world full of teen angst. In Skins, he acted alongside other now-well-established actors like Nicholas Hoult and Daniel Kaluuya, who played Tony Stonem and Posh Kenneth, respectively. 

However, the rowdiness wasn't limited to the screen, as Patel revealed stories of the Skins cast enjoying crazy drug-ridden parties that Patel has recalled as memorable and "insane," according to The Hollywood Reporter. The actor recalls a memory linked to a rather funny photo of Patel partying with his fellow Skins cast members, where he and the others were reportedly “drugged off their faces.”. 

"I’m wearing a corset with the Rocawear belt, and basically my arse is hanging out,” Patel said while referencing the photo. “That was a crazy day."

Unsurprisingly, Patel spent over half a year preparing for Lion, as the film told the heartwarming and remarkable story of a young man's quest to find his birth mother.

Lion tells the story of Saroo, a 5-year-old Indian boy who gets lost after his brother leaves him on a train station bench while scavenging for food in a local train station in their hometown of Khandwa, India. After desperately trying to find his brother on a train, he falls asleep again and eventually finds himself 900 miles away from Kolkata. After surviving on the streets, authorities find him and realize he's unable to tell them the location of his home or his mother's. He's then adopted by an Australian and resides in Tasmania until adult Saroo, who's now officially named Saroo Brierley, takes it upon himself to use Google Maps to find his birth mother. Patel took on the emotionally driven role of Saroo for the 2016 film and said that after first reading the script, he recognized the movie as “an astounding anthem of humanity.”

“Journeys like this are really few and far between for an Indian actor like myself. I went on this long, eight-month kind of pilgrimage as this character, traveling across the trains in India, meeting the most incredible people, and trying to change my accent and the way I looked. I really grew as an individual,” Patel said to “CBS This Morning.” 

To prepare for Lion, Patel worked with an accent coach to replicate Brierley's Australian accent and hit the gym to build his figure. 

“We spoke about the look, growing the hair, going to the gym, and getting a bit more Aussie, a little more Alpha,” Patel told CNN. “Eating a bit more food.”

For the role of Saroo Brierley, Patel also did what he calls "introspection,” where he was asked to look at his reflections for an hour and write what he felt in a diary. He also visited the orphanage where the real-life Saroo resided in 1986. The actor was welcomed with the message “Welcome Lion” being written on the floor, and the kids would often call him a “hero" during his visit, which Patel admitted would make him feel “like a fake.”

“You’re like, ‘I’m not the hero. You’re the heroes,’” Patel said while referring to the children he visited at the orphanage. 

Patel met his current girlfriend, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, while shooting the film Hotel Mumbai in 2016 as they both starred in the action-based dramatic thriller that centered around the the 2008 terrorist attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai. Cobham-Hervey also co-directed a short film with Patel titled Roborovski (2021), which is a movie that's based on a murderous hamster that wreaks havoc after being overlooked by the pet shop's customers. 

When discussing the creative process behind the film in an interview series titled Inspired By, Cobham-Hervey explained that the idea was conceived by Patel. 

"We were meant to be going out for dinner one night and I was very hungry, and he disappeared into a room and he's like, 'I can't talk to you for a while. I'm just coming up with this idea and I just need a moment to write it down" she jokingly told the child interviewer. 

The actress-director then added that she helped Patel with Monkey Man.

"We were working on a script that he's just finished filming called Monkey Man, which is sort of an intense action movie. And it was very dark and violent, and we needed a way to switch off from that," Cobham-Hervey said. 

While Patel was filming The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, he gave the Star Wars franchise a go. In an interview with Total Film, he talks about his rather unsuccessful audition for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. 

"I sent them an iPhone video from my trailer in India. The next minute, I got a call-back, and I was there, and that was fascinating," he told the outlet. 

While it was undisclosed which part Patel auditioned for, it's speculated that it was for the part of Finn or Poe, played by John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, respectively. This isn't to say that Patel hasn't found success in big-name franchises, as he played Zuko in M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, a live-action remake of the popular comic in the Avatar series. 

Ahead of the release for Monkey Man, Patel told Deadline he was put in Taekwondo so he can have a place to channel his energy. 

“It’s pretty crazy to think that this kid who wet himself in his first karate class because he didn’t know his right from his left is standing here with his own action film,” Patel told the outlet.

However, the need for his martial arts skills came far earlier in his career. For his role in The Last Airbender, Patel was tasked with furthering his craft in Martial Arts and trained with his longtime coach, Stuart Anslow. Anslow spoke to The Standard about Patel's craft saying "Dev doesn't muck about. He can fight. We're really proud."

Anslow states that Patel has been training with him since childhood and that he has a true appreciation for the sport. 

"Some kids are there because their parents want them to be but he was there because he loved it. He was really serious about it. Everyone liked him, he was a good guy, a laugh. He didn't just get on with the kids but with the older students as well. He was an easy guy to get on with," Anslow told the British publication. 

The actor seems to be inactive on all forms of social media, including Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). The actor brought up his lack of social media presence back in 2015 on The Meredith Vieira Show, stating that he feels like social media distances people from person-to-person interaction. At the time, the actor admitted he only used an archaic BlackBerry. 

"I just think it's so consuming and everything is just on their apps and Angry Bird," Patel said as he jokingly followed the statement with "I sound like an old man right now, don't I?"  

For his first lead role, the then-18-year-old Dev Patel was tasked with playing the titular role of Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which features the action-packed story of a young man from Mumbai's Dharavi slums whose varied and colorful experiences help him answer a series of questions on the game Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. 

To play a young man from the slums, Patel visited Dharavi himself with Boyle and later told Condé Nast Traveler in 2012 that it was "the greatest learning experience" of his life. 

"The hospitality and the openness were a real eye-opener. You meet people with nothing but the biggest smiles you’ve ever seen. I’m a curious person, so I find India fascinating—the poor and the ultra-rich all smack-dab together," said Patel. But the actor's character study wasn't limited to the slums, as Patel, like Jamal's grown-up character, experienced serving tea at a call center and scrubbing dishes in a hotel kitchen, according to NPR in 2009. 

"As soon as you step off the plane — bang! — you're hit with a wall of heat, and your clothes become sweaty all of the sudden and the air smells different," Patel told NPR when describing his trip to India. "Someone called it the smell of sweat and dreams, which I really love."