Why Sid From How I Met Your Father Looks So Familiar
"How I Met Your Father" is the newest comedy series from Hulu, spun off from — you guessed it — "How I Met Your Mother." The new project stars Hilary Duff as Sophie, a character who will play this show's Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor). Throughout the series' tenure, we'll be guessing who is the father of Sophie's son. Some suspect the dad will be Jesse (Chris Lowell), a close friend of Sophie's who appears to have a crush on her. Sid, played by the fabulous Suraj Sharma, serves as Jesse's roommate.
Sid is Jesse's lovable and supportive friend, and the actor has quite a recognizable face. If you are wondering where you've seen Sid before, you're not alone. Sharma has starred in some of the biggest films and television series out there, and he landed his very first acting credit ever in an Academy Award-winning movie. Here's where you might have seen Sharma before.
Suraj Sharma's first role was in the smash hit Life of Pi
Suraj Sharma was an inexperienced teen actor when he nabbed the lead role in the critically acclaimed "Life of Pi." Ang Lee's masterpiece was based on the novel of the same name, and Sharma managed to wow the director, landing him the part. Sharma played the titular character, Pi — a shipwreck survivor stranded on a life raft for 227 days. However, Pi isn't alone as his only company is a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi and Richard Parker survive the ordeal when they wash up on a Mexican shore.
The film's ending is open to interpretation, as it's suggested that the animals are placeholders for actual humans. Richard Parker is suspected to be Pi himself. No matter how you view the end of the film, it was quite the experience for Sharma. He mentioned that Lee instructed him not to talk to too many people during filming to feel isolated like his character. "You might think I'm being slightly melodramatic, but I felt like I was going insane," he told The Guardian. "I had not many people to talk to about what was going on; I was so far away from everybody I knew, I was doing things I had never done before. I got scared of myself at one point."
Sharma grabbed his second movie role in Million Dollar Arm
2014's "Million Dollar Arm" starred Jon Hamm as struggling sports agent J. B. Bernstein. Hoping to find the next big talent to save his career, J. B. proposes the idea of a reality series set in India called "Million Dollar Arm." The purpose is to find potential baseball stars to be brought back to America for MLB stardom.
Suraj Sharma plays Rinku Singh, one of the men who win the reality series. Along with Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal), the two travel back to America with J. B. Their initial try-out for American baseball teams is an utter disaster as they are too nervous to show off their natural talent. Despite having a lousy go-round on the first try, the two men eventually impress a Pittsburgh Pirate scout, and they both sign deals with the team. The film, which is based on a true story, wasn't a big box office success but was a solid second credit for Sharma.
According to Collider, Sharma and Mittal's experience on the project was very close to Singh and Patels. "We didn't know each other, and Rinku and Dinesh didn't know each other," Sharma remembered. "They found out stuff and went through this intense period of training, and we had to go through training. There was this parallel journey for us. There was this whole simultaneous thing happening. When we were put into that situation where we finally had to pitch, we were like, 'Wow!'"
Suraj Sharma landed an eight-episode stint on Homeland
Also, in 2014, Suraj Sharma starred on Showtime's vastly popular "Homeland." The Claire Danes-led series ran for eight seasons over nine years, with Sharma appearing in eight episodes. The actor played Season 4's Aayan Ibrahim, a medical student studying in Islamabad.
Aayan's story is tragic, as he loses his mother and sister in a CIA drone strike which is meant to wipe out his uncle, Taliban leader Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar). Carrie (Danes) ends up wooing Aayan to get information about his uncle, and he falls in love with her. Eventually, Haqqani realizes what his nephew is doing and kills him for falling into Carrie's trap.
Sharma spoke about his character with Vogue India, noting, "I wouldn't call him a bad guy; he's a good guy in a bad situation. His life's going haywire, and he's just trying to get away from it all." The outlet also reported that the actor drew on events in Gaza to help him prepare for the role.
Sharma had a supporting role in Happy Death Day 2U
In 2019, Suraj Sharma starred in "Happy Death Day 2U," the sequel to the original horror film from 2017. Sharma played Samar Ghosh, a student at Bayfield University who works on the Sisyphus Quantum Cooling Reactor for his thesis. Samar's reactor is responsible for creating the time loop that Tree (Jessica Rothe) is in. There ends up being multiple timelines in which the characters get stuck.
Samar's reactor is confiscated by DARPA and is turned back on after Tree's life finally goes back to normal. That poor girl will never catch a break. It's a pretty wild movie, taking place in different dimensions, and we may even be getting a "Happy Death Day 3" that takes things even further.
When The Hindu asked Sharma what day in his life he'd choose to repeat over and over, he had an endearing answer. "I would choose a day from school. There used to be this thing called Activity week which was basically a sports day but for a week. I could go through those days infinitely. I loved those days," he said.
Sharma was a series regular on God Friended Me
Suraj Sharma picked up a supporting role in 2018's "God Friended Me." The series ran on CBS for two seasons, with a total of 42 episodes. Sharma played Rakesh, a close friend of Miles Finer (Brandon Micheal Hall), an atheist who gets a Facebook friend request from God. Miles is prompted to do good deeds and help people he doesn't know, thanks to the direction from the mysterious account. Unfortunately, the series was canceled, with fans of the show never quite finding out who the person, or being, behind the God account was.
When chatting with TV Insider, Sharma discussed what he thought the series was all about. "I think everyone will take away some different. [The show lives in] that space where one begins to understand the commonalities among people whose views are different," he said. "In every episode, we are meeting a new character with a completely different life, completely different story, and throughout the episode, we start to realize there are similarities, there are things that you find familiar in each other no matter what that person's ideology is or where they're from."