Actor Dev Patel Among Vanity Fair’s Top 12 Risk Takers

British Indian actor Dev Patel is among Vanity Fair’s 31st annual Hollywood edition, a compilation of 12 stars who earned their place on it by taking risks and navigating the industry’s notorious shifting sands. By following their guts — and by having guts— they’re showing studios and streamers what stardom should look like now, even as executives scramble to build a new world order.

It’s been 16 years since Dev Patel became a star with “Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle’s 2008 Oscar magnet. The intervening years have found him din diverse roles that include an Arthurian knight, a zealously earnest hotelier, and David Copperfield.

His latest film “Monkey Man” is also his directorial debut. “Directing, co-writing, and starring in the film broke his bones but not his spirit, he told Vanity Fair. “I started the process with a Gandhi-like approach, and by the end of it, I was more Malcolm X.”

Set in Mumbai, “Monkey Man” is based on an original story and screenplay by Patel, Paul Angunawela, and John Collee. It tells the story of a man named Kid (Patel), an ex-con who has returned to society. He has fond memories of an idyllic childhood being raised by his loving mother (Adithi Kalkunte), who amazed him with stories about Hanuman. After years of suppressed rage, he discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. “As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him,” according to a synopsis of the film. 

With politics and religion as its underlying themes, Patel said he was aware, from day one, that he was “using the genre of action as a Trojan horse to expose an audience to a world that they never would’ve really experienced before.” He continued: “The central villains of the film are political, religious figures. This is happening around the world as we speak, conflicts regarding religion and land.”

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He also wanted to make a film for “young Dev, the kid that grew up watching Bruce Lee films and yearned to exist in a certain film that I never had the opportunity to.” He also wanted to fill his film with “other actors from India that don’t even get a shot out there because maybe their skin’s too dark and they’re not considered the typical leading men and ladies but are incredible thespians.”

However, Patel thought the film might never find its way onto screens, he told Vanity Fair. “It languished in the Netflix queue until Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Universal eventually acquired distribution rights.”