Topic: Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail is an Indian child actor, who played the youngest version of Salim Malik in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award. Following the film's success, he has been cast in the upcoming Bollywood film Kal Kisne Dekha (2009).

Like his on-screen character, Azaruddin comes from one of the slums of Mumbai, living in the Garib Nagar slum near Bandra station. According to the The Daily Telegraph, "his family's illegal hut was demolished by the local authorities and he now sleeps under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin with his father, who suffers from tuberculosis."

His casting in Slumdog Millionaire proved controversial with the producers admitting they debated whether to use real slum kids in the film fearing it would distort their lives too much. Director Danny Boyle justified the casting saying: "These people have so much prejudice against them, why should we be prejudiced against them as well?"