Dev Patel On Life After 'Lion': 'The Film Has Changed My Life'

Dev Patel is still racking up honors for his performance in his Oscar-nominated film, Lion!

The 27-year-old actor was in Dubai on Tuesday (May 2) to be honored as one of the Chivas Icons at the H Hotel venue Play, hosted by Burberry and The Weinstein Company.

“It’s really exciting actually,” Dev told The National. “The calibre of talent that Chivas has worked with before [Sir Patrick Stewart has been among the honorees], and just the opportunity to sit down in front of a bunch of incredibly influential people tonight and talk about this campaign, the #LionHeart campaign [which supports 11 million children who live on the streets and another 80,000 who go missing every year in India], which is really important to me.”

“The film has changed my life so it’s really important to try and raise awareness and funds for the three charities within that umbrella [Magic Bus; Childline India and Railway Children India] is amazing,” Dev continued. “I met a lot of the heads of charities on the press tour, when we started the campaign, me and Nicole [Kidman] and we started a competition where they could come and meet us at events, we started a crowd funding. I’ve been to India and shot five films so I’m very aware of this situation. So while preparing for the role I got to go and visit orphanages and it really was kind of a nourishing and heartbreaking experience. You leave there driven to do the role justice because that’s all you can do as an actor. You put it into the work.”

FYI: Dev is wearing Burberry.