Rise to Fame
His mother spotted the Skins casting ad in a free newspaper and took him to audition, science exam the next morning be damned. He got the role of Anwar, a character the writers reportedly shaped partly around his personality once he was cast. If Danny Boyle's teenage daughter hadn't been a fan of the show, none of the rest of it would have happened. Boyle cast him in Slumdog Millionaire specifically because he didn't look like a potential hero. The film swept the 2009 Oscars with eight wins including Best Picture. Eighteen years old, no film credits before it, and suddenly everywhere.
In the Spotlight
The decade after Slumdog was built on strategic detours. Lion (2016) got him a BAFTA win and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. By The Green Knight (2021) he was anchoring arthouse films with no apology. Monkey Man (2024) was where he stopped waiting for the right script and wrote one himself. Netflix bought it for $30 million, got cold feet over its Hindu nationalist villain, and quietly tried to kill it. Jordan Peele stepped in, Universal picked it up for under $10 million, and it landed 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and $35 million worldwide. Most people in his position would've kept cashing the same checks.
Side Notes
He won a bronze medal at the 2004 AIMAA Taekwondo World Championships in Dublin and earned his black belt in 2006. He's not on social media and describes himself as a technophobe, which means most people's mental image of him is still Jamal Malik. He first came up with the idea for Monkey Man in 2014. During filming a decade later, he broke his hand in one action sequence; a stuntman dropped an ax on his foot and broke two of his toes in another. Some projects cost more than money.