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Full Name:	Kal Penn
Birth Name:	Kalpen Modi
Famous As:	Actor
Date of Birth:	April 23, 1977
Place of Birth:	Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Height:	5' 11
Nationality:	American
Education:	Attended Howell High School in Farmingdale, New Jersey Attended University of California at Los Angeles, majored in Film and Sociology
Claim to Fame:	As Kumar Patel in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

• Tater Tops 2009: What Was the Best Tearjerker?

  EOnline.com - Found Jun. 20, 2009 Westwick) on Gossip Girl ? Izzie's (Katherine Heigl) cancer battle on Grey's Anatomy ? Kutner's (Kal Penn) suicide and funeral on House...

• Kal Penn visits Stanford University

  The Paly Voice - Found Jun. 11, 2009 Kal Penn talks to Stanford and Paly students about sociology behind minority portrayals in American cinema.

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  KIVI-TV - Found Jun. 7, 2009 Photo Galleries from TVGuide Entertainment News from TV Guide Kal Penn, who famously stepped away from his role on Fox's top-rated House to go work

• Kal Penn not "missing" from White House gig

  KNDO KNDU - Found Jun. 6, 2009 Photo Galleries from TVGuide Entertainment News from TV Guide Kal Penn, who famously stepped away from his role on Fox's top-rated House to go work

• Award winning comedian Don Barnhart and Hollywood Celebrities ...

  24-7PressRelease.com - Found May. 25, 2009 We meet up with the USO Hollywood Handshake Tour featuring actors Christian Slater and Kal Penn.

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  Events At Stanford - Found May. 23, 2009 Kal Penn looks at the intrinsically political nature of pop culture.

• Kal Penn not "missing" from White House gig

  Wave 3 - Found Jun. 6, 2009 Photo Galleries from TVGuide Entertainment News from TV Guide More>> Kal Penn, who famously stepped away from his role on Fox's top-rated House to go ...

• 'House' star Olivia Wilde plays a princess in 'Year One'

  USA Weekend Magazine - Found Jun. 21, 2009 ... with the encouraging note: 'Oh, this would be so good if it had some meat in it!' Your co-star Kal Penn recently made headlines when he left...

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  AsianWeek.com - Found Jun. 29, 2009 ... presence there, including Tony Award winning B.D. Wong, Star Trek star George Takei and the Indian-American actor and House co-star, Kal Penn.

• Are ABC's Obama Plans Blurring the Lines?

  Indiewire - Found Jun. 16, 2009 3. Hey ...Where's Kal Penn?4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 0. Ah, Why Can't They Make Sci-Fi Like Back in '8? Primetime sports rule weekly ratings - Variety Does a 10 p.m. Nightline Make Sense? - Time CBS tops sleepy summer ratings race - Variety Lakers: Ratings Champs - New York Times Explore All

Kal Penn extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Kal Penn
Penn at a Barack Obama rally at the University of Maryland on February 8, 2008.
Born	Kalpen Suresh Modi April 23, 1977 (1977-04-23) (age 32) Montclair, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Actor; Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison
Years active	1998–present

Kalpen Suresh Modi (Gujarati: કલ્પેન સુરેશ મોદી, born April 23, 1977), best-known by his professional name Kal Penn, is an American film and television actor, and is the incoming Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison in the Barack Obama administration.¹

On April 8, 2009, Penn announced that he would join the Obama White House as Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. This necessitated that his character Lawrence Kutner be written out of the TV series House.¹²

Contents 1 Early life 2 Education 3 Acting career 4 Political interests 5 Personal life 6 Filmography 6.1 Films 6.2 Television roles 7 References 8 External links

Early life

Penn was born as Kalpen Suresh Modi in Montclair, New Jersey, to a father who worked as an engineer and a mother who worked as a fragrance evaluator for a perfume company. Both of his parents are Hindu and Gujarati Indian immigrants.³ He has stated that stories of his grandparents marching with Mohandas Gandhi for Indian independence were a significant influence on his interest in politics.⁴

Education

He attended middle school at Marlboro Middle School and played baritone saxophone in the jazz band there. Penn attended The Fine and Performing Arts Academy (a magnet program) at Howell High School for freshman, sophomore, and junior years; he transferred to Freehold Township High School for senior year; both schools are part of the Freehold Regional High School District. He was active in the schools' theater productions. He attended UCLA, where he double majored in film and sociology.⁵

Acting career

Penn's feature film debut came in 1998 in Express: Aisle to Glory. He has since appeared in American Desi, National Lampoon's Van Wilder, Malibu's Most Wanted, A Lot Like Love, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Dude, Where's the Party?, Love Don't Cost a Thing, Superman Returns, National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, Epic Movie, The Namesake, and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and an uncredited appearance in Deck the Halls. Penn was featured in the The Lonely Island's rejected MTV comedy pilot for Awesometown.

Penn says that he derived his acting name, Kal Penn, as a lark: “Almost as a joke to prove friends wrong, and half as an attempt to see if what I was told would work (that anglicized names appeal more to a white-dominated industry), I put ‘Kal Penn’ on my resume and photos." His audition callbacks rose by 50 percent. Penn has stated that he prefers his birth name and uses "Kal Penn" only for professional purposes.⁶

In January 2007, Penn appeared in the first four episodes of the sixth season of 24 as Ahmed Amar, a teenage terrorist. Penn says he nearly turned down the role due to personal ethics, stating, "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?"⁷

Also in January 2007, he appeared in the spoof comedy Epic Movie as well as the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In May 2007, Penn received the Asian Excellence Award for Outstanding Actor for his performance in The Namesake.⁸

In fall 2007, Penn joined the cast of the Fox medical drama House as a fellowship applicant.⁹ E! reported that Penn had signed on as a regular on the show along with Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobson and this was confirmed in the plot of the episode "Games". Penn continued with the series through to the episode "Simple Explanation", which aired April 6, 2009. He made an additional appearance as Kutner on the fifth season finale, "Both Sides Now", that aired on May 11, 2009.

Political interests

Penn was an advocate for Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008 and a member of Obama's National Arts Policy Committee.¹⁰ He appears in the Barack Obama video "Sí Se Puede Cambiar" by Andres Useche¹¹ and appeared with comedian George Lopez on January 18, 2009, at "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial".

In early 2009, Penn was offered the position of Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison in the Obama administration, which he accepted. This necessitated his character Lawrence Kutner being written out of the TV series House.¹¹²¹³ In his new role with the Obama administration, Penn will serve as a liaison with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities.¹⁴

Personal life

Penn is a vegetarian and ate soy patties instead of hamburgers during the filming of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.¹⁵

In spring 2008, Penn served as a visiting lecturer in Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.⁵¹⁶ He taught two courses, "Images of Asian Americans in the Media" and "Contemporary American Teen Films."¹⁷

Penn is currently working on a graduate certificate in international security from Stanford University.⁵¹

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1998	Express: Aisle to Glory	Jackie Newton
1999	Freshman	Ajay
2001	American Desi	Ajay Pandya
2002	Hector	Kendal Cunningham
	National Lampoon's Van Wilder	Taj Badalandabad
	Badger	Sanjay
2003	Cosmopolitan	Vandana's fiancé
	Love Don't Cost a Thing	Kenneth Warman
	Malibu's Most Wanted	Hadji
	Dude, Where's the Party?	Mo (Mohan Bakshi)
2004	Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle	Kumar Patel
	Ball & Chain	Bobby
2005	Dancing in Twilight	Sam
	Son of the Mask	Jorge
	A Lot Like Love	Jeeter
	Sueño	Raj
2006	Man About Town	Alan Fineberg
	Bachelor Party Vegas	Z-Bob
	Superman Returns	Stanford
	Deck The Halls	Amit Sayid
	National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj	Taj Badalandabad
2007	The Namesake	Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli
	Epic Movie	Edward
2008	Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay	Kumar Patel

Television roles

Year	Title	Role
1999	Brookfield	Kumar Zimmerman
	Buffy the Vampire Slayer	Hunt
2000	Sabrina, the Teenage Witch	Prajeeb
	Spin City	Buddy
2001	Angel	Fez Boy
	ER	Narajan
	NYPD Blue	Solomon Al-Ramai
	The Agency	Malek
2003	All About the Andersons	George
	Tru Calling (Haunted)	Steven
2004	Homeland Security	Harrison
2006	The Danny Comden Project	Max
2007	Law and Order: Special Victims Unit	Henry Chanoor
	24	Ahmed Amar
	House (2007–2009)	Dr. Lawrence Kutner

References

External links

• Kal Penn at the Internet Movie Database
• Five Questions for Kal Penn, Nirali magazine, December 2006
• Kal Penn Goes to Hollywood, Nirali magazine, September 2004

v • d • e Harold & Kumar series Films Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle · Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Actors Kal Penn · John Cho · Neil Patrick Harris

v • d • e National Lampoon's Van Wilder series Films National Lampoon's Van Wilder • National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj • National Lampoon's Van Wilder: Freshman Year Cast Ryan Reynolds • Kal Penn • Jonathan Bennett • Tara Reid • Glen Barry · Kristin Cavallari Crew Walt Becker • Mort Nathan • Harvey Glazer • Robert L. Levy Characters Van Wilder

v • d • e Portal · Episodes (Season 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Category) · Awards · Soundtrack · Quotes · Category Main characters Dr. Gregory House · Dr. Lisa Cuddy · Dr. James Wilson · Dr. Allison Cameron · Dr. Robert Chase · Dr. Eric Foreman · Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley · Dr. Chris Taub · Dr. Lawrence Kutner Minor characters Edward Vogler · Stacy Warner · Mark Warner · Michael Tritter · Amber Volakis · Lucas Douglas Executive producers Paul Attanasio · Katie Jacobs · David Shore · Bryan Singer Cast Hugh Laurie · Lisa Edelstein · Robert Sean Leonard · Jennifer Morrison · Jesse Spencer · Omar Epps · Olivia Wilde · Peter Jacobson · Kal Penn