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The British director said that he struggled to find an actor to portray the film's lead character Jamal Malik, a young man who enters the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, because all the candidates were too muscular.
"I thought, 'That doesn't look right for the film, he's meant to be an underdog.' You're meant to think, 'What's this guy got? Nothing apparently,'" Boyle said.
Boyle, the director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, revealed that his daughter recommended he cast Patel, who at the time was starring in E4's Skins.
"My daughter said, 'You should watch him in Skins', because I couldn't find someone and I thought, he's the right guy."
However, the filmmaker insisted that Patel's mother kept away from the set.
"We had to get rid of his mum because he was only 17 when we met him and his mum was kind of looking after him and making sure he didn't come to any harm," he explained. "I thought, we can't have a romantic lead with his mum in attendance, so we had to get rid of his mum - not literally obviously, she's lovely."
Slumdog Millionaire lands in cinemas this Friday.
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