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.”
