Alum Heren Patel Stars in Drama, Hopes to Break into Bollywood

INDIA WEST -- Though he has been in love with Bollywood since his youth, Patel said he got into acting on a whim when he decided to take a theatre class at San Francisco State University and ended up falling in love with it. “I never thought I would do something like this until 2012 actually,” he said. “Before I was a finance major and then after that I was a hospitality major. I juggled around a couple of majors, I didn’t know what to do. But then I decided I wanted to major in Drama and become an actor. I took one acting class at San Francisco State and ever since then, I just told myself that this is something I want to do and never go away from.” Patel said that, for him, acting is like yoga or a kind of exercise that allows him to go outside of himself. “I just love the feeling you get when you’re on stage or on camera — you just feel like a different person,” he said. “It’s like meditation for me; I get to express myself and let go of things that I feel during the day.”