Utkarsh Ambudkar
Utkarsh Ambudkar
Utkarsh Ambudkaris an American actor. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is a former VJ for MTV Desi. He has appeared in the comedy film Pitch Perfect as the character Donald, and in the television shows The Mindy Project and The Muppets. He is set to star in the Fox series, Eat, Pray, Thug. Utkarsh originated the role of Aaron Burr in the developmental readings of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth8 December 1983
CityBaltimore, MD
CountryUnited States of America
I didn't have a role model. My role model was Michael Jordan. Bad role model for an Indian dude... I didn't have anyone who looked like me. And by the time I was old enough to have what could have been a role model, they were my peers. Aziz Ansari is my peer. Kal Penn is my peer.
The amount of love I get from India, from Pakistan, from Asia, from Persia, Malaysia - people are just like, 'Brown boy doing it, brown boy doing it!'
I moved to New York - I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like '8 Mile.' I used to rap battle.
It just so happened that my agent called and said, 'There's this movie 'Pitch Perfect.' Here are the sides.' I think I originally read for Bumper, because Donald didn't have much in the script, so I read all Bumper's lines. I beatboxed for them, because that's what my character was supposed to do. And then I was like, 'By the way, I rap.'
It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American.
You have to find a way - and thankfully for me, it's been music - to separate yourself from the racial identity. It's not easy, and I continue to work, God bless, and I'm really, truly appreciative of it.