Acting in Hotel Mumbai was both harrowing and eye-opening: Dev Patel

Actor Dev Patel says acting in Hotel Mumbai was a "harrowing experience" and an eye-opener in realizing the travails of the victims of the 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai.

Patel recounted his experience of making the film during a discussion at the Asia Society on Wednesday, 1 October. He was asked if he would like to star in a movie about British colonial rule in India.

He said that he would "love" to do a film on British rule, but it would depend on the script and went to explain the difficulties of making films based on historic events.

"I feel especially when you are tackling a project that is about real events, that affected real human lives, in a massive catastrophic way, there is great responsibility in that. So I tread very carefully when I am dealing with such subject matters. I just did a film recently which is based on the 2008 terror attacks on the Taj Hotels in Mumbai. It was a harrowing film to shoot and to really get an inside look at the suffering of these people in this hotel in this terror siege was really eye-opening," he recalled.

Hotel Mumbai is based on the three-day siege of the Taj Hotel that started on November 26, 2008, by Pakistan-based terrorists belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba, killing 167 people.

Patel is reported to be playing the role of a waiter in the movie directed by Anthony Maras.

The British-born actor received the Asia Society's 2017 Asia Game Changer Award in recognition of "using celebrity to place a spotlight on India's poor".

Asia Society said his roles in Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Lion (2016) "challenge audiences to view India's poor not as teeming, desperate masses but as individuals imbued with hopes, dreams, and opportunities".

Asked if there was any role he would not play and where he would draw the line, Patel said: "I would take home any role if it is executed well."

At one time he used to say that he would not play specific type of characters like taxi drivers or terrorists, he recalled.

Explaining his change of mind, he said: "It is important that we educate the world through our art. If I can play a role like that... and show the grey areas and parts of the human psyche and mentality that we are not aware of, then we can break down those broad strokes that we have, that we keep painting in the media and we can get to the core of some of these issues."