2017 02 27 sunny pawar ent main

8-year old Sunny Pawar of the Best Picture-nominated film, Lion, steals the show at the Oscars 2017 red carpet.

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Sunny Pawar stars in the Best Picture-nominated film Lion, the real-life story of a 5-year-old Indian boy who got separated from his family and as an adult tried to find them again with the help of Google Earth.

Lion has been racking up awards attention, including four Golden Globe nominations and two Screen Actors Guild award nominations for Dev Patel and co-star Nicole Kidman. Mumbai native Sunny Pawar plays the young version of Saroo Brierley, who got stuck on a train that took him hundreds of miles from his home to Kolkata, where he lived on the streets before eventually being adopted by an Australian couple. “It was a scary but very brave story and that really touched me,” Pawar tells PEOPLE.

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The 8-year old Pawar got the part thanks to a casting call that was held all over India! Lion director Garth Davis and casting director Kirsty McGregor searched far and wide at schools all over India, where they discovered Pawar, who couldn’t even speak English at the time.

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