Background
Patel was born in Freeport, Illinois, the son of financial consultant father Vasant Patel and real estate agent mother Champa Patel.
Patel was born in Freeport, Illinois, the son of financial consultant father Vasant Patel and real estate agent mother Champa Patel.
He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 with double majors in Economics and International Studies.
He spent most of his youth in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has a sister, Geeta Patel, who is a writer/director An investment banker after college, Patel"s entertainment career started after co-founding popular poker magazine All In while living in Los Los Angeles During that time, he was asked to fill-in as an emcee for an arts festival talent show, during which time he performed 45 minutes of improvised stand-up in between acts, drawing huge laughs and opening the door to an unexpected stream of auditions, his first agent, and two dozen commercials that first year.
Considering it a short-term opportunity, he deferred his admission to law school for one year to enjoy the serendipitous stint in entertainment.
A full-time actor within a couple months, this stint became a career, which eventually taught him the importance of art and fueled an effort to fully immerse himself into the craft of acting. He"s been in over 70 national commercials, has been cast in one or two television pilots nearly every year since 2006, and numerous films and tv shows, most notably Transformers, Scrubs, lieutenant"s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,The Comedians, and Hawaii Five-O.
In 2008-2009, Patel appeared as George Patil in six episodes on The CW"s Easy Money.
In 2010, Patel starred in Past Life on Fox and was set to star as the male lead in a Fox sitcom pilot called Nirvana opposite Rachael Leigh Cook. The film portrays Patel"s au tobiographical journey of trying to find an Indian wife.
The duo have a deal with Fox Searchlight Pictures to write and direct a narrative remake of the film.
In 2015, Patel worked in one episode of the Aziz Ansari series, Master of None, Since 2015, Patel has been on the John Stamos television series, Grandfathered. He is also an active investor in start-ups in health and wellness.