Kalpen Modi

At first, his parents were slow to embrace their son's acting ambitions, and preferred that he pursue his interest in international studies. He attended New Jersey's Howell High School and then transferred to Freehold Township High, where his acting teachers inspired him to take the stage and helped him explain the choice to his parents. "Kal is one of the brightest students I've ever known, and his father had 10,000 questions for me," said Dan Green, supervisor of the Freehold Performing Arts Center in the Freehold Regional High School District. "He was not initially pleased with Kal's choice. But I have to congratulate him, because he respected his son enough to let him do what he wanted to do."

"I think any parent with a non-arts background would be scared about her/his child's future if the kid chose something non-traditional like the arts," Modi later added. "I think that is compounded a little more for South Asians in the post-65 immigration group because of certain traditional patterns of education, job placement and so on. So at first my parents were cautious but not unsupportive, and as I started working over the years, they realized it was something I love to do." Modi went on to study drama in New York City, and then attended the University of California-Los Angeles, where he majored in sociology with a specialization in theater, film, and television.

Still, questions of his identity, and its place in the acting world, remained in Modi's thoughts. He never felt comfortable with the stereotypical Indian characters he had seen in the movies, often portrayed as two-dimensional goofballs with heavy accents. He saw this racism onscreen and confronted it during auditions, including an incident when he was asked where his turban was.

Partly as a joke to prove his friends wrong, and partly to find out what would happen, Modi changed the name on his resume to an anglicized version of his first name: Kal Penn. To his amazement, it worked. He said he landed 50 percent more auditions, and his career took off. Yet he explained, "It showed me that there really is such an amount of racism (not just overt, but subconscious as well)." He also noted, "I still prefer Kalpen Modi."

Acting Career

Modi started out in small television and film roles in the late 1990s.

He appeared on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Spin City. In a 2001 episode of Angel, he played a part identified as "Young Man in Fez." In 2002 and 2006, he played Taj Mahal Badalandabad in the National Lampoon's Van Wilder movies, an Indian exchange student seeking to learn "the great American art of muff diving."

In 2007, he had a recurring role as a terrorist in the drama 24. Not all of his characters transcended the stereotype he had hoped to collapse. "Yeah, the majority of roles I get offered are very stereotypical," he explained, and noted of his part in 24, "I have a huge political problem with the role. It was essentially accepting a form of racial profiling. I think it's repulsive. But it was the first time I had a chance to blow stuff up and take a family hostage. As an actor, why shouldn't I have that opportunity? Because I'm brown and I should be scared about the connection between media images and people's thought processes?"

Modi sought out parts that were more than skin deep. In 2001, he had a supporting role in American Desi, a movie about a college-aged son of Indian immigrants who grew up hating his family's culture and finds himself with a group of Indian-American roommates. When the title character falls for a girl who shares his ethnic background but not his resentment of it, he is forced to confront his identity. Though the film had only a limited release, it was a breakthrough in terms of finding dynamic Indian-American roles.

With 2004's Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Modi became a star. In movie trailers, he was bluntly billed as "that Indian guy from Van Wilder." But the film itself, while featuring a fair share of toilet humor, was one of the first mainstream movies with two Asian-Americans in leading roles that were not Asian-driven (they were burger-driven).

Graduating from stoner-comedy to serious film, he starred in a dream role as Gogol Ganguli in the 2006 adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake. In the movie, his character is the son of Indian immigrants who struggles to navigate the native culture of his parents and that which he was born into as an American-much like Modi's personal narrative. By the time he turned 30, Modi had become not only the top actor of South Asian descent in Hollywood, but had also made a name for himself apart from his ethnicity.

Modi has said that "the arts as a whole are looked down upon in the South Asian community. My hope is that seeing me in a mainstream role will encourage our peers to go into this field. It's depressing that there are so few South Asian faces on TV and screen." Still, moving on to roles such as Dr. Lawrence Kutner on the television show House, M.D., Modi can be seen outside characters that deal with race or ethnicity altogether.

Political Involvement

In 2006, Modi entered a graduate certificate program in international security at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

In the spring semester of 2008, he was a guest instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and taught undergraduate courses on "Images of Asian Americans in the Media" and "Contemporary American Teen Films."

Modi has also worked with nonprofit organizations. He was a member of the American Red Cross advocacy board and produced a documentary about malaria eradication in Ethiopia.

It was when he met Barack Obama in 2007 that he was beckoned back into his old passion for politics. During the 2007-2008 writers strike that kept House off the air for several months, Modi became a zealous campaigner, stumping at over 175 stops in 26 states along the trail. He served on the Obama campaign's Arts Policy Committee, and as a floor whip during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. )

After the election, Modi realized he might not want to leave politics behind, and landed a plum job as associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison. The new role meant a significant pay cut from acting: TV actors at his level earn around $50,000 per episode, whereas D.C. staffers at his level earn anywhere from $60,000-$70,000 per year.

Modi said he won't accept any acting jobs while working in the Obama administration, though he has signed on for a third feature as Kumar, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (anticipated for 2010). He said in 2009 that he expects to remain at his desk in the Old Executive Office Building for "at least" one or two years.

He left the White House in April 2009 to film the sequel, but returned in November 2010.

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