Dev Patel felt 'utterly naked' when he met Jeremy Irons

Dev Patel stars in The Man Who Knew Infinity.

Actor Dev Patel has played many roles: a slumdog millionaire, a Marigold Hotel owner, a network intern, an airbender. Now he’s grappling with impossible equations as Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity.

For the film, Londoner Patel had to master a Southern Indian accent and face one of his greatest fears: crunching numbers. “I suffer from mathematically induced brain freeze,” said Patel, 26, laughing. “My dad is an accountant and a numbers wizard, so I’ve been quite the letdown in that area.”