Kal Penn

Overview

Born
April 23, 1977 · Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Birth name
Kalpen Suresh Modi
Nicknames
- K-Kal
- Hollywood
Height
5′ 10¼″ (1.78 m)

Biography

Family

Relatives

Trivia

Is best friends with John Cho, Ryan Reynolds and Neil Patrick Harris.
Began using the name Kal Penn, a variation on his first name Kalpen, to get more roles; he believed that his difficult foreign name would scare away potential employers.
In April 2009, Penn told Entertainment Weekly Magazine that the writers killed off his character on House (2004) because he had asked to be allowed to leave the show to go work for the Barack Obama Administration as the Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Currently teaches a course at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. The course is entitled "Asian-Americans in the Media".
His father is an engineer and his mother, who has a master's in chemistry, worked as a fragrance evaluator for a perfume company.

Quotes

[in New York Magazine, commenting about his recurring role as a terrorist on TV's 24 (2001)] 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?
(2005) My friend and I will drive down to Tijuana just for lunch -- it's a 2 1/2-hour drive if you leave early. We go over the border and get these great tacos. There's no sign on the place, so we don't even know the name of it. Behind the shops where all the tourists go, there are these two alleys, and it's there. Half of the appeal, honestly, is that we're going to Mexico for tacos. We're here in Southern California and it's so close to another country, it's awesome that we can just go down there for lunch.
[in "New York" Magazine, discussing the dissimilarity between his real life and the "Kumar" character] I don't smoke weed. That's not something that I generally offer up in terms of talking points about the movie, because there are a lot of stoners that like the movie and you never want to make them feel like something's disingenuous. But for me, it was always a buddy comedy or, you know, if it was a stoner movie, it was probably equal parts a hamburger movie.
[on President Donald Trump's Muslim ban] Shame on us. This is un-American. What he and the Republican party are doing is wholly un-American.