Himesh Patel began his acting career in a state of panic. It was 2007, and on the morning of the then 16-year-old’s final GCSE exam, he received a phone call asking him to audition that afternoon for a role on EastEnders. The moment he finished the test, his dad rushed him to the casting. It was only as Patel read the character description that his nerves subsided. He was up for the part of Tamwar Masood, a somewhat geeky, studious boy with an older sister, whose parents ran a post office. All of that was true of Patel, too, and he aced the audition. He was a working television star before he’d even started his A-levels, but his real-life parents weren’t going to let him get swayed by glitz and glamour.
“I did the paper round until I was 21,” remembers Patel now, a little incredulously. “For five years of doing EastEnders, I was still doing the paper round. I hated it at the time, but looking back it kept me in check and stopped me getting carried away with being on telly and being mildly famous.”
Patel spent nine years on the long-running BBC soap, taking Tamwar from a bit-part character to a much-loved fan favourite who unexpectedly became a stand-up comic and married Danny Dyer’s onscreen daughter. Since leaving the show, he’s continued to confound expectations: first, by landing the lead in Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired romcom Yesterday, then by popping up as a suave fixer in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and as Jennifer Lawrence’s journalist boyfriend in the end-of-the-world satire Don’t Look Up. In some ways, his rise is a remarkable one; in others, it is perfectly comprehensible. Patel is a natural everyman, with a quiet charisma and an earnestness that acts as a sort of narrative lightning rod. No matter how unfamiliar the world or outlandish the plot twist, Patel can ground it, make it real.
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 