Nitin Ganatra

Nitin Chandra Ganatra (born 30 June 1967) is a Kenyan-born British actor. He is known for portraying Masood Ahmed in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders (2007–2019), for which he won a British Soap Award. Early life Ganatra was born on 30 June 1967 in Kenya. Both sides of his family have origins in Gujarat, India, which was explored on-screen in the 2013 series of Who Do You Think You Are? His great-grandfather arrived in Kenya in the late 1890s, as one of 32,000 contracted labourers to build the Uganda Railway. One of under 10,000 to stay in the country after the railway's completion, his grandfather and his father later joined the family's general trading business. After Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom and forced the native Indian population to choose between Kenya and their British passports in 1971, Ganatra, aged 3, moved with his family to Coventry, where the family still own a corner shop. Ganatra was educated at Coundon Court School and Community College on Northbrook Road and then studied Drama, Film and Television at the University of Bristol. He went on to train under the tutelage of the late Master theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski.