'Namesake' star relishes challenge

Kal Penn felt the heat while he was shooting "The Namesake."

"It was hotter than we made it seem," Penn says of the portions of the film that were shot in Calcutta. "That made it challenging to live and shoot, but it also, I think, added to the film.

"'Cause when it really is 120 degrees and you've gotta pretend like it is, that's one less piece of acting that you have to worry about."

New Jersey native Penn was excited to get the lead in "The Namesake," not because, being of Indian descent, he felt a connection to Gogol Ganguli, but because of the specific challenges Gogol faces.

"The assumption, obviously, is that I would have related to this story because of the shared ethnicity and the family history and stuff with Gogol," says Penn, who plays Gogol from his teens into his mid-20s. "Those things tend to be the least interesting parts of playing characters.

"Gogol is an interesting guy because he's tormented by something that is unexpected. He has a Russian name, and ... that Russian author whom he was named after — he learns in high school — was basically dysfunctional, died a virgin, was essentially insane. When you're 16, these things really torment you."

Penn, best known for his starring roles in "Epic Movie," "Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj" and "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," also appreciated the fact he was surrounded by strong women in front of and behind the camera on "The Namesake." Mira Nair directed the film, now in theaters, and Sooni Taraporevala adapted the screenplay from Jhumpa Lahiri's best-selling novel.

"All of his relationships with women are with incredibly strong, driven, motivated women," says Penn, "which is a rare gift as an actor, especially if you've come from the teen-movie world (where) most female characters are written as dumb girls that are functions of the male character."

Penn, who turns 30 on April 23, was inspired to become an actor by Nair's "Mississippi Masala," her first American movie.

"I saw that when I was in seventh or eighth grade," Penn says by phone from Las Vegas, where he's attending a friend's wedding. "It was the first time that I saw people that looked like me on screen, and I never realized that until I saw that movie.

"I thought, 'This is interesting because I guess, until this moment, it's always been cartoon characters like Apu from "The Simpsons" or people in brown face, like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" or that movie "Short Circuit."'

"So it was oddly empowering. I mean, I was just a kid, but it kind of motivated me to want to be an actor."