I’m Ash T

I’m Ash T — no relation to Ice T.

I grew up in Wise, Virginia, the kid of Indian parents from Karnataka. English and Kannada were my two passports, and I learned early how to slip between worlds.

My first role was at age five, playing Gonbei the Duck Hunter. I loved it — but I didn’t chase it. I did what seemed safe: medicine. I became Dr. Ashok Tholpady, a transfusion medicine physician at M.D. Anderson, publishing 22 papers and living the life everyone expected. On paper, I was fine. Inside, I felt like a glitch in the Matrix — stuck in somebody else’s script.

So I threw it out. I left medicine, moved to Los Angeles, and started over in acting and stand-up. It wasn’t about chasing a dream so much as breaking free.

Since then, I’ve been drawn to characters full of contradictions: the kind of people who charm you one second and betray you the next, who want freedom but dig themselves deeper. That’s the space I live in as an actor — messy, magnetic, and never safe.