Patten was educated at Island School in Hong Kong[1] and at Queens' College, Cambridge.
Her first major role after graduation was Eugenie in Vincent in Brixton in the West End in 2002.
In 2005 and 2006, she appeared in English Touring Theatre's Hamlet, playing Ophelia opposite Ed Stoppard.
In 2006, she appeared in the Bollywood film Rang De Basanti as Sue McKinley, a young British woman who comes to India to make a documentary film about the British rule in the Indian subcontinent.
Patten also played the role of Vicky Anderson, in an episode of New Tricks, the daughter of an English-born Hong Kong businessman, Douglas Anderson, who had been involved in questionable building deals in Hong Kong, shortly before the end of British rule in 1997.