After appearing in the BBC serial opera at the age of 16, Himesh Patel has since been in movies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence and isn’t slowing down.
From a regular cast member of the iconic serial opera EastEnders to a leading man alongside Hollywood’s top celebrities, one former EastEnders star has had an amazing journey.
Teachers encouraged Himesh Patel to join a local theater organization when he started performing in school plays. Patel was born in Cambridgeshire.
The day he got his 16-year-old GCSE results, he also got a call informing him that he had been selected for an audition for a new role that would appear in EastEnders.
Due to his achievement, he made his debut in October 2007 and ultimately played the role of Tamwar Masood.
With plots involving his inability to gain admission to a prominent institution, managing the family restaurant, getting married to Afia, and coping with his controlling mother Zainab (Nina Wadia) meddling in his affairs, his character was regarded as a bookworm.
At the 2011 Inside Soap Awards, the wedding storyline would win the best wedding prize.
Having previously heard the demand for more significant jobs, Patel made the decision to depart the square in 2016. Since then, he has talked candidly about his time on the BBC show, acknowledging that I felt ‘defective’ as a teenager.
In an interview with GQ magazine, he stated: “Having acne as a teenager is the worst thing ever. However, it’s a very other matter when you have pimples in front of millions of viewers each week on EastEnders.
“It was difficult. Being surrounded by performers makes you feel a little flawed. I simply felt the strain, even if everyone gets spots.
However, Patel was far from flawed, as his acting career continued to flourish. His first appearance on Channel 4 since leaving EastEnders was in the Jo Brand-created comedy Damned in 2016.
Yesterday, which was directed by Danny Boyle, was his breakthrough performance and the catalyst for his rise to prominence.
Patel portrays a musician who discovers he is the only one with any familiarity with The Beatles’ catalog following a bicycle accident. Playing the best tunes of the Liverpool band and passing them off as his own, he starts to gain fame.
As he became increasingly well-known and saw his acting abilities advance, the 34-year-old actor also moved to Los Angeles.
However, Patel’s origins have never been forgotten by soap opera fans, who were astounded when he costarred with Jenner Lawrence in the Netflix sensation Don’t Look Up. At the time, one viewer left the following comment: “EastEnders’ Tamwar in Don’t Look Up. I adore seeing British people in Hollywood.
Patel was nominated for an Emmy in 2022 for his role in the HBO miniseries Station Eleven and also starred in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. The show portrayed a group of survivors who earned a livelihood as traveling entertainers and was set twenty years after a flu epidemic.
Patel is now in charge of the HBO comedy The Franchise, which makes fun of the production of high-profile Hollywood movies. Armando Iannucci from The Thick of It and co-stars Richard E. Grant and Jessica Hynes co-created it.
Patel’s career is still booming, as seen by his roles in Greedy People, which was published earlier this year and starred Lily James and Joseph Gordon Levitt.
In an interview with Midday India, Patel discussed his journey from EastEnders to hanging out with the biggest stars and filmmakers.
He stated: “Yesterday was released five years ago.That was a true turning moment in my life, and I’m happy of the kind of career I developed as a result of that sofar and where I started.
“I think it is still a rarity for someone to be on a soap in the UK for that long and then manage to break out of that and I can only speak for the British industry but for us to really see that part of our industry as a breeding ground for talent because I think it is.”
Patel wants people to understand that it’s a valid first step for talent, even for those who can’t or won’t attend a regular acting school, even if he acknowledges that he’s not the first soap star to achieve success.
“There’s me, Natalie Emmanuel, who’s a fantastic actress and recently starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film. She began her career in Hollyoaks, so it’s a feasible path for people to start there,” he continued.
“We have wonderful tradition in the UK of drama schools and that’s great but I think we sometimes don’t think hard enough about other avenues and I’m proud of the fact that I’m an example of that.”
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