Hiran Abeysekera

Abeysekera was educated at Nalanda College Colombo.[2][3] Having obtained a diploma from the Lanka Children's and Youth Theatre Foundation, he played the lead role in a British Council production of Peter Shaffer's Equus in 2007.[4] This enabled him to audition for drama schools in the UK, following which he secured a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.[5] He graduated from the drama school in 2011, becoming only the second Sri Lankan to do so.

Abeysekera made his professional stage debut with the English Touring Theatre in 2011, playing Valere in Tartuffe.[6] In 2012 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon and was cast as Bartholomew in the Taming of the Shrew. In 2015, he played Peter Pan on the London stage,.[7]

In 2016 he returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company and played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream which was adapated for TV Film and screened by the BBC,[8][9] Posthumus in their stage production of Cymbeline staged at the Barbican Theatre London,[10] and Horatio in Hamlet.[11]

In 2018, Abeysekera began appearing in the Hulu series Find Me in Paris, portraying the role of Dash Khan until 2019.[12] He played Pi Patel in the 2019 premiere of Lolita Chakrabarti's adaption of Life of Pi at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, for which he won a UK Theatre Award.[13] Also in 2019 he was cast in the part of Leonardo da Vinci in the new play Botticelli in the Fire staged by the Hampstead Theatre, London. He then played Sunil Sharma in the play Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the Royal National Theatre.

In 2021 Abeysekera returned to the role Pi Patel when the Life of Pi transferred to the Wyndhams Theatre in London's West End. In 2022 won the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a play for his performance of Pi Patel.[14]

• Hiran Abeysekera at IMDb
• RADA/Profile/Hiran Abeysekera