Himesh Patel was cast in the BBC soap when he was just 16 and has gone on to star in films alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence and isn’t slowing down
One former EastEnders star has gone on an incredible journey from among the regular cast of the popular soap to feature as a leading man alongside Hollywood’s biggest names.
Himesh Patel was born in Cambridgeshire and began acting in school plays, which would lead to him being urged by teachers to join a local theatre group.
On the day he received his GCSE results aged 16, he also received a phone call saying he had bagged an audition for a new character set to feature in EastEnders.
He was successful and ended up playing the part of Tamwar Masood, making his debut in October 2007.
His character was considered a bookworm, with storylines that included his failure to get a place in a prestigious university, running the family restaurant, marrying Afia and dealing with his overbearing mother Zainab (Nina Wadia) interfering in his life.
The wedding plotline would scoop the best wedding prize at the 2011 Inside Soap Awards.
Patel chose to leave the square in 2016, already hearing the call of bigger roles to come. He has since opened up about his experience on the BBC series, confessing he felt ‘defective’ during his teenage years.
Speaking to GQ magazine he said: “When you’re a teenager and you have acne, it’s the worst thing in the world. But then when you’ve got acne in front of millions of people every week in EastEnders, it’s a whole other thing.
“It was rough. You just kind of feel defective because you’re surrounded by actors. Everyone gets spots, but I just felt the pressure.”
But Patel was far from defective as his acting career would go on from strength to strength. His first role post-EastEnders would be the Jo Brand created sitcom Damned, on Channel 4 in 2016.
However, his breakout role and transformation into leading man would be Danny Boyle directed film Yesterday.
Patel plays a musician, who after a bicycle accident finds he is the only one who has any knowledge of The Beatles’ discography. He begins to find stardom by playing the Liverpool band’s greatest hits, passing them off as his own.
The actor, now 34, also relocated to Los Angeles as he gained more attention and found his acting credentials step up a gear.
Soap fans have never forgotten about Patel’s roots though and were gobsmacked when he appeared alongside Jenner Lawrence in Netflix hit Don’t Look Up. One viewer at the time commented: “Tamwar from EastEnders in Don’t Look Up. I really love seeing Brits in Hollywood.”
Patel also appeared in Christopher Nolan film Tenet and was nominated for an Emmy in 2022 for his part in HBO miniseries Station Eleven. The series was set two decades after a flu pandemic and followed a group of survivors who made their living as travelling performers.
Patel is now leading HBO comedy The Franchise, a series that parodies the making of multi-million dollar films in Hollywood. It was co-created by The Thick of It’s Armando Iannucci and co-stars Jessica Hynes and Richard E. Grant.
Patel also stars with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Lily James in Greedy People, released earlier this year, proving that his star is still on the rise.
In a conversation with midday india, Patel reflected on his career path from EastEnders to rubbing shoulders with the biggest actors and directors.
He said: “It’s been five years since Yesterday came out. That was a real turning point and I’m very proud of the sort of career that I built off the back of that so far and I’m very proud of where I began.
“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.”
While also acknowledging he’s not the only soap star to make it big, Patel wants people to recognise it is a legitimate starting step for talent, including those who don’t or can’t attend a traditional drama school.
He added: “There’s myself, Nathalie Emmanuel who’s a wonderful actress and was just in Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie and she started out in Hollyoaks so it’s a viable journey for people to begin there.
“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.”
The Franchise is streaming on Sky and Now TV.
