The son of Gautam Bhattacharjee, a member of the Indian Communist Party who had to flee from the country in 1942, and Anne, a woman from a family of Russian descent, he was educated at state schools in Harrow.

[1] In the 1970s, Paul was a member of "The Young Theatre" at North Harrow[3] where he was very involved in their productions (including an early role in The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew in 1974)[4] and began to learn his trade as an actor.

Bhattacharjee's first regular television role was in the short-lived soap Albion Market (1985) in which his character was charged by the police for the murder of a racist;[5] it was the actor's work as a teenage anti-racism activist which had led to his first meeting with Jatinder Verma in 1977.

[1] He played Omar Khayyam, a narrator named after the poet, in Iranian Nights (1989) by Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali, at the Royal Court, a satirical response to the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses,[9] which was later shown in a television version on Channel 4.

[14] He was cast as Inzamam Ahmed in EastEnders, recurring in the soap opera for two years from 2008,[1] and appeared in the films Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Casino Royale (2006), and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012).