MOVIES

'Slumdog' star finds inspiration in a spirit that won't give up

By Charles Ealy
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, December 12, 2008

It's easy to root for Dev Patel.

As Jamal in director Danny Boyle's enormously entertaining "Slumdog Millionaire," he plays one of the biggest underdogs ever: a kid who has to put up with a lifetime of brutality only to make his way to a Indian game show, where he gets to the last question between him and the equivalent of a million dollars.

It's a scenario that's as improbable as his current status as one of Hollywood's rising stars. Few actors, especially ones who have just turned 18, get such a chance in their careers. But speaking during a telephone interview from Los Angeles, he doesn't sound like the type to let the moment pass without trying to seize what he can.

Like Jamal, he sounds like a survivor. (Last week, the National Board of Review named him as delivering the top "breakthrough performance by an actor" in 2008. He has also studied tae kwon do for eight years.)

"I was so lucky to get this film," he says. "Danny had been looking for someone to play Jamal and had gone to India and Los Angeles but couldn't find anyone who had the demeanor of the underdog. Then he came home one day, frustrated, and saw that his daughter was watching 'Skins' on (British) TV, and she said, 'What about this guy?' So Danny called me up, I auditioned and got the role. It was a wonderful chance."

Before "Slumdog," Patel was a self-admitted acting novice. "My first acting role was in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night,' " he says of a London high-school performance. "I ended up winning best actor in the school competition."

His mom, an emigrant to Britain of Indian descent, started urging him to go for other roles and noticed an advertisement for actors on a new TV comedy series called "Skins."

"I was basically dragged to the audition by my mom," he says. "But I queued up and got the role in the second callback audition."

His character was primarily intended for comic relief. Patel says he played a goofy young kid who was desperate to lose his virginity. "It didn't require much acting ability," he says. "When they said action, I knew that I had to say my lines, but that was about it. That was how green I was."

So when he landed the role of Jamal in "Slumdog," he says, he knew he had to step it up a notch.

"I had to show a different side of myself," he says. "So I tried to use my eyes to show the character's emotions, his optimism, his determination."

Before the filming began, Boyle took Patel to the slums of Mumbai, where most of the movie's early action takes place.

"I got to see so much of India that you wouldn't normally get to see. I went to the slums, where millions of people live. And I went to a call center (where the character Jamal works as a young adult) and spent two days there. It was really good to help me break out of my foreign, British mind-set.

"Before I went to the slums, I thought it was going to be hard and depressing. You know you'll see malnourished children, holding an empty bowl and begging for food. But when I went there, I got an overwhelming sense of community. The people in the slums don't pity themselves. They're part of a colony, where everyone knows everyone and people are working together. They're just normal people. They want to put food on the table and get their kids educated."

Such is the case with the characters in "Slumdog," he says. "When I first read the script, I didn't see Jamal as sad. I thought of him as a soldier, an opportunist. When he's a homeless kid and he finds some plastic bags, he uses them to make a temporary tent."

But the secret to Jamal's character, Patel says, is his love for a girl whom he met in the slums. Her name is Latika, and Jamal will stop at nothing to be reunited with her.

"That's why he goes on the game show," Patel says. "He isn't interesting in winning the money. He just wants Latika to be able to see him and know where he is and maybe get in touch with him."

Patel says he fell in love with Jamal's character because he survives torture by police as well as being made a laughingstock on-air by the show's sleazy host.

"He doesn't give in," Patel says. "He's got a one-track mind. Other kids in this situation would be dreaming about having the money to buy a car, but his dream is to find a girl among a city of 80 million people."

Throughout the torture and taunting, Patel plays Jamal as the ultimate soft-spoken fighter. "He doesn't give in. He doesn't scream. He's a kid who grew up in the worst kind of environment, a dog-eat-dog world where children are maimed to make them better beggars. Yet he remains optimistic, pure and innocent."

And that, Patel says, is what "Slumdog" is all about. "The people of Mumbai love their movies, and they love their dancing. And this is the ultimate story of the underdog, with the people of Mumbai finally getting to see a hero like them."

cealy@statesman.com; 445-3931