Kal Penn For The New York Times

Kal Penn, actor and former Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement, is photographed in a neighborhood of northwestern D.C. Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

I got to meet a movie star a few weeks ago! Kal Penn!

Some of you might know him as Kumar, Dr. Lawrence Kutner, or Gogol from The Namesake.

…but I imagine his White House security badge said Kalpen Modi, his birth name.

The New York Times profile paints him as a modest, hard worker. Kinda the opposite of a Hollywood stereotype. I’ll be honest, I was charmed.

It’s always good to find common ground with subjects, but I was a little trepidatious to bring up the Harold & Kumar movies. I assume it’s a point of exhaustion for him, but I couldn’t help it. I’m genuinely excited to see the third movie. I also said I was rooting for his character on House. But we went on to talk about other stuff, too, like how uninspiring the food at the White House cafeteria is, how he’s barely experienced life in DC because he’s always working, and, of course, really good bad movies.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 at 5:45 pm. It is filed under For The New York Times, Photojournalism, Photos, PORTRAITS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.