Kayvan Novak
Kayvan Novak believes being typecast as a British Asian actor is not always a bad thing.
The actor is back on the big screen this week with his new movie Four Lions, which has caused some controversy.
Novak told MSN: "I look at my early career, and you know when I left drama school, for a young Asian actor you could either play a doctor on Holby City or you could play a terrorist in Spooks and get to wear a nice shiny suit.
"I did that and I think there's a lot of Caucasian actors who come out of drama school and their competition is like a thousand, whereas mine might be 50. So for me, my early breaks were being typecast.
"And I think any young actor should grab that with both hands and not worry about that."
Novak takes on the role of a suicide bomber in Christopher Morris' latest project which follows a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point.
"It's my belief that a film like Four Lions is a massive step forward in that direction. You might think it's not - you might instinctively think it's an instance of typecasting.
"But I think the genius of this film is you like these characters so much and you really enjoy their interactions so much that their ethnicity, their background, or even the mission that they're setting themselves to do kind of evaporates and disappears - and you're left with just people that are humanised in quite a unique way that only comedy can [achieve].
"So actually I think this is kind of a step forward."
Four Lions is out now.