Sacha Dhawan

Sacha Dhawan is a British actor born on 1 May 1984 in Bramhall, Stockport, to Indian parents originally from Jalandhar, Punjab, India. He began acting at the age of twelve, training at the Laine-Johnson Theatre School in Manchester and later attending Aquinas College, a Roman Catholic school in Stockport.

Dhawan's early television work included recurring roles in the ITV series Out of Sight, which ran from 1997 to 1998, and Weirdsister College, in which he played Azmat Madaridi from 2001 to 2002. He also appeared in the 1999 miniseries The Last Train, as well as guest roles in EastEnders, Altogether Now, and City Central. In 2008 he appeared in the ITV drama Wired as Ben Chandrakar, alongside Jodie Whittaker and Laurence Fox. During the 2010–2011 season he was part of the ensemble cast of the NBC sitcom Outsourced.

In theatre, Dhawan originated the role of Akthar in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys, first performed in 2004. He went on to reprise the role in the Broadway, Sydney, Wellington, and Hong Kong productions, as well as radio and film versions of the play. His Broadway appearance came in 2006. In July 2018, he reunited with Bennett and co-star Samuel Barnett for Bennett's play Allelujah! at the Bridge Theatre.

His television profile continued to grow through a series of notable roles. He portrayed Paul Jatri in the first series of the BBC One comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax in 2012, and in November 2013 played director Waris Hussein in the BBC Two docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, a biographical film produced as part of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary celebration. In 2017 he starred as Sathnam Sanghera in The Boy with the Topknot on BBC Two, and played Davos across both seasons of the Netflix Marvel series Iron Fist from 2017 to 2018. Beginning in 2020, he appeared as the Master in the twelfth series of Doctor Who, acting opposite Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, and reprised the role in the 2022 special The Power of the Doctor. From 2020 to 2023, he played Count Orlo, an advisor to Catherine the Great, in the Hulu comedy-drama series The Great.

Dhawan was cast as the title character in the BBC crime drama Virdee, adapted from novels by A. A. Dhand, though he was later replaced in the role by Staz Nair.

In his personal life, Dhawan was in a relationship with actress Anjli Mohindra as of 2018. The couple became engaged during a trip to Machu Picchu in 2024 and married in a Hindu ceremony in Tuscany on 30 August 2025.