Ved Maddison

Ved Campbell Maddison ( ; born 8 September 2001) is a half-British, half-Indian influencer and actor.

Born in Durham, England, to a British father and Naga-Punjabi mother, Ved was three years old when his family moved to Goa, India. He lived there until age 11, when he went to Woodstock School in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand. In his final year at school, he developed an interest in Hindi cinema and the city of Mumbai.

He moved to Mumbai and started acting in 2019 and creating content in 2024, amassing over 600 million views in two years on his Instagram account, where he has 333,000 followers. He is set to make his Kollywood debut in R. Madhavan's biopic on G. D. Naidu, the Indian innovator from Coimbatore who manufactured India's first electric motor.

Early life

Ved's maternal grandfather, Ved Kumar Seth, was a Punjabi Hindu living in Jammu. He met Ved's maternal grandmother, Asangla Ao—an Ao from Khensa village in Mokokchung district, Nagaland—in Guwahati, Assam. Ved's mother, Catherine, was born in Guwahati and moved to Mumbai in 1992 to study at the Garware Institute of Career Education and Development in Kalina, Santacruz.

Ved's father, actor Richard Maddison, was born in 1967 in Swindon. After being privately educated at Durham School, he studied engineering at Brunel University and got a job at Schlumberger, which eventually posted him to Mumbai in 1993.

His parents met at a dinner party in Versova in November 1993. They moved to the UK and got married in December 1996. Ved was born at University Hospital of North Durham on the 8th of September, 2001. His sister was born in 2004, and he moved with his family to Goa, India, in January 2005. His brother was born later that year.

In 2013, Ved started studying at Woodstock School, Mussoorie. He spent six years there and earned his US High School Diploma, graduating in 2019.

2019–2024: Pre-social media fame

After graduating from high school, Ved started working in film casting in 2019 as an intern for the renowned Indian casting directors Nandini Shrikent and Karan Mally. He worked on Thappad, Toofaan, and the Excel Entertainment web series Dahaad. He also worked as a casting assistant on the music video for rapper DIVINE's song Gandhi Money, where he made his first on-screen appearance as a background dancer, albeit only making the cut in the behind the scenes video.

After moving to Stockholm to pursue a business degree at the Stockholm School of Economics, Ved began acting as an extra in various Swedish and international films and shows. He had his first on-screen line in the Netflix film One More Time as Bitcoin Boy, and he was also a part of the [...] collage in the music video for Moth to a Flame by Swedish House Mafia and The Weeknd.

After moving back to India in July 2023, Ved moved to Bandra to try his luck at becoming a Bollywood actor. He got the lead roles in commercials for MakeMyTrip during the 2023 Cricket World Cup and for Mountain Dew Punjab, but struggled to find success in the film industry. He introduced his father to his agent, and as a British man in his 50s, Richard was promptly cast in Meghna Gulzar's Sam Bahadur and Nikkhil Advani's Freedom at Midnight, making the Maddisons a family of actors.

2024–present: Pivot to influencer

Ved had a public Instagram account with a modest following that he kept public to be noticed by casting directors during his time in Mumbai. He uploaded a video in late January that unexpectedly hit 80,000 views in a day. Excited by the relatively large numbers on his video, Ved began uploading Instagram reels daily, and by the fourth day, he uploaded a video that got over 20 million views and earned him his first 25,000 followers.

Ved continued to upload videos and reached 200,000 followers in just eight months. He moved back to Stockholm in September 2024 and continued acting in various Swedish productions until he moved back to India in 2025. During his time in Sweden, he travelled to India three times and was a part of the Indian influencer marketing team for Amazon Prime's 2025 film Heads of State in London. While in London, he met Indian comedian Samay Raina by chance, and they ended up recording his second-most viewed video of all time, amassing over 70 million views across all platforms and gaining Ved 70,000 new followers, taking his account over the 300,000 follower milestone.

Ved moved back to India in September 2025, where he currently works as an influencer and actor, working with brands such as Sprite, Rolling Loud India, Spotify, District by Zomato, Amazon Prime Video, and Canva. He also acted in a commercial for Zoho Recruit.

Filmography

As an actor

As a member of the casting department