How Dev Patel Went From A 'Skins' Sesh Head To Hollywood Hero

When Dev Patel first burst onto our screens back in 2007 as lovable little wreck head Anwar Kharral on Skins, nobody could have predicted that we'd be sat here 10 years later, watching him attend the Oscars as a nominee.

While he may not have managed to scoop a prestigious Academy Award last night, with his mum by his side, he certainly isn't short of awards in general. In fact, they're practically coming out of his arse.

It's no wonder, though. Over the past decade he's appeared in some of the most critically acclaimed films and firmly established himself as one of the best young actors to have come out of the UK in recent years.

Amazing when you look at where it all started, really.

Dev was born and raised in London. As a kid, he displayed a flair for the dramatic arts and all of the aforementioned awards that he has appearing from where the sun doesn't shine. The first one came from his debut acting role in a school play. Not exactly an Oscar, but his teachers obviously saw something in him.

In high school, he got an A* in GCSE drama, with his teacher singing his praises. "Dev was a gifted student who quickly impressed me with his innate ability to communicate a wide variety of characters imaginatively and creatively," she said. "He was awarded full marks for his GCSE performance to a live audience and the visiting examiner was moved to tears by his honest portrayal".

It wasn't just acting that Dev was a total beast at, though. He also showed a great talent for being able to kick peoples' heads in. Not in a 'problem child, fights people at the bus station after school' sort of way, but in more of a 'highly-skilled and precise, martial arts badass' sort of way.

Taking up Taekwon-do in 2000 he went on to compete in several national and international championships, where he earned two bronze medals. He now holds a first dan black belt and for those of you who are unsure of what that means, basically just don't pick a fight with him if you're fond of your rib cage the way it is.

In 2006, Patel took the first major step in his career when, after two auditions, he was cast as Anwar Kharral in E4's teen-drama series, Skins. The character was actually written specifically for Dev after he auditioned and is based around his personality. An OG sesh head and man of good taste, Anwar's interests were listed as, "tequila, dope, pills, Lupe Fiasco, breasts and X Factor", although we can't comment on whether they're shared by Dev himself - we'll leave that up to you to decide. He stayed in the show for the first season, reprising his role for the second.

Dev may have jumped off the Skins train but his career was only just heating up and his biggest role to date was waiting just around the corner.

The young British actor was catapulted onto the big screen and into the spotlight when he took the role of Jamal Malik, the main character in Danny Boyle's award-winning Slumdog Millionaire, in 2008.

Boyle had been auditioning hundreds of young Bollywood actors for the lead role but found none of them to be suitable. Male leads in Bollywood tend to be "strong, handsome, hero-types", which was not what he was looking for at all. Boyle's daughter pointed him toward Skins and he knew he had to have Dev Patel. A bit of a backhanded compliment if you ask us, but Dev accepted the role and went on to win a BAFTA and several other awards for his performance. We'd imagine that his pay cheque probably eased the pain of being deemed weak, average-looking and 'not a hero', by his director.

It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns, though. In 2010 Patel appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, which was absolutely slammed by pretty much every critic who so much as heard its name whispered in passing conversation. However, many of them did say that Patel's performance was one of the only redeeming features - so that's something to cling onto at least.

After acting in a number of smaller productions, Dev took on the role which would see him take his mum as his date to the Oscars here in 2017.

He was cast in the biographical film, Lion, alongside Nicole Kidman and, as far as critics are concerned, completely redeemed himself. The buzz from the film has made him one of the hottest names in Hollywood and is sure to have directors climbing over each other to cast him in future blockbusters.

Not bad for a lad who made his acting debut getting off his nut at parties with a load of spotty teenagers.

The future looks bright for Dev Patel and we can't wait to see what he's got in store for us in years to come.

Words by Paddy Maddison

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