Suraj Sharma is an Indian actor who portrayed Aayan Ibrahim on Homeland. He is best-known to international audiences for his debut role in the Oscar winning movie Life of Pi.
Biography[]
Born in 1993 in New Delhi, Suraj Sharma is an Indian actor who had his international breakthrough with 'Life of Pi: Shipwreck With Tiger'. He played the role of shipwrecked Pi Patel in Ang Lee's Oscar-winning film. In order to get the role, he had to compete against about 3,000 other actors, including his younger brother Sriharsh, who had persuaded him to go to the casting with him and who had acted in a few films himself. Despite his inexperience, or perhaps because of it, Ang chose Lee Suraj because he liked his eyes and his innocent demeanor. For "Life of Pi" Suraj had to learn to swim, among other things, which the film's stunt coordinators in particular taught him. He also had to reduce his weight and spoke to almost nobody for a few weeks in order to be able to understand and portray the shipwrecked man's isolation.
Suraj's father, Gokul Churai, works as a software engineer, his mother Shailaja is an economist. In addition to his brother mentioned above, he also has a sister who is also younger than him. Suraj himself studied philosophy at the University of New Delhi, a course he only briefly interrupted to film Life of Pi. After graduating, he took classes in mass communication at New York University and focused even more on acting. For example, he played baseball pro Rinku Singh in the Disney film "Million Dollar Arm" or the part of Aayan Ibrahim in the fourth season of "Homeland". In 2022 he took on one of the leading roles in the Hulu series "How I Met Your Father", which can be seen in Germany on Disney+ offered by Star.