Despite a difficult history of racist stereotypes and lacklustre casting, Arabs today are finding more avenues than ever in Hollywood, whether in the realms of acting, directing or producing. With Rami Malek (Egyptian-American) clinching a historic Golden Globe and ‘The Serpent’s Taher Rahim (Algerian descent) nominated for both a Bafta and Golden Globe for ‘The Mauritanian’ (2021), we take a look at 32 actors in Hollywood of Arab descent — some more surprising than others.
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Omar Sharif: Earnest eyes, gap teeth and distinctive mole — the Egyptian heartthrob set a blueprint for crossover actors in the Middle East. There hasn’t been anyone who’s done it quite like him since. Sharif, throughout his life zipping between Egypt, North America and Europe for work, became synonymous with achieving success on both sides of the hemisphere. In the Arab world, he was the black-and-white film heartthrob, overly expressive and sweet with that course head of hair. By the time he was tapped by Hollywood — and asked to get rid of the mole, apparently — he became known for English-language roles like ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and ‘Doctor Zhivago’. He spoke five languages (French, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Arabic) and banked on people not pinpointing where he was from so he could land more roles (yes, the ambiguous minority goes way back in Hollywood…) Sharif was nominated for an Oscar for his role in ‘Lawrence’, and got two Golden Globe awards.
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Rami Malek: Rami Malek — who turns 40 on May 12 — got his start in an episode of ‘Gilmore Girls’ in 2004. Fifteen years later, he made history in when he became the first Arab actor to win an Oscar in 2019 for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The ‘Mr Robot’ actor stood on the shoulders of giants like Sharif — “I am the son of immigrants from Egypt, I’m a first generation American,” he said, upon accepting the Oscar. In his early days, the slow-speaking, wide-eyed kid from California attended graduate school for theatre. As a struggling actor, he lived with his parents and delivered shawarma and falafel to make ends meet. After playing roles in ‘Night at the Museum’, ’24’ and ‘The Pacific’, he made his breakthrough as Elliot Alderson — a mentally unstable computer hacker — on ‘Mr Robot’, after fellow American-Egyptian Sam Esmail cast him in the lead role. He’s since won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first non-white actor to do so since 1998.
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Jenna Dewan: Once a backup dancer for Janet Jackson, the part-Lebanese actress Jenna Dewan became a familiar face in Hollywood’s dance genre. Her most recognisable movie role is probably the ‘Step Up’ franchise, where she met her would-be husband (and later, ex-husband) Channing Tatum. She’s since acted in TV roles such as her recurring character Teresa Morrison in ‘American Horror Story’. Dewan is of Lebanese and Polish descent on her father’s side, German and English descent on her mother’s side. In 2009, after being named one of the “most beautiful women from the Arab world,” Dewan wrote on Twitter: “Lol, my Lebanese family will love this.”
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Ramy Youssef: Queens-born Egyptian actor Ramy Youssef has changed the landscape for Arabs in Hollywood — possibly for good. Where once Arab actors could only find work as terrorists or falafel peddlers, Youssef has changed — and broadened — the narrative. Starting as a stand-up comic who made his acting debut on the Nick at Nite sitcom ‘See Dad Run’, he became a familiar face on the ‘Late Show with Stephen Colbert’. By 2019, Youssef debuted his Hulu series ‘Ramy’ about a first generation Arab-Muslim American living in America. The role has become popular with Arabs and non-Arabs alike, earning Youssef a Golden Globe and several Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his acting and directing.
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Mo Amer: The Palestinian-American stand-up comic Mo Amer is a testament to how far Arab actors have come in Hollywood. Middle Eastern comedians have long spoken about being pigeonholed into untitled terrorist roles or political villainy of some sort. Not for Amer, though. He acted alongside Ramy Youssef in the Hulu series ‘Ramy’, as Ramy’s diner-owning cousin. But now Amer is about to hit the big leagues a star in DC’s superhero film ‘Black Adam’, starring Dwayne Johnson. While it’s unclear what role Amer will play, breaking into the DC cinematic universe is a huge feat in and of itself.
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Amr Waked: Amr Waked is one of few crossover stars who came after Omar Sharif. The Egyptian actor broke out in Hollywood in 2005’s ‘Syriana’, but he had already established himself in his home country as a film festival darling. However, in 2019, Waked was sentenced to eight years in prison in Egypt and does not intend to return there, residing in Spain instead. Waked currently stars in the Hulu series ‘Ramy’ as the protagonist’s father.
Image Credit: Gulf News archives
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Hiam Abbas: Palestinian actress and director Hiam Abbas has found huge success across the globe. Whether she’s in French, English or Arabic cinema, she’s making a stir. She played Omar Sharif’s on-screen wife in ‘Rock the Casbah’ in 2013, one of his last roles before his death. Abbas later appeared in ’Blade Runner 2049’ alongside Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling. She’s starred in massive titles, from Netflix’s ‘The OA’ to HBO’s ‘Succession’. She also stars in ‘Ramy’ as the protagonist’s mother, Maysa. “I think it’s very important [to see a show about a Muslim immigrant on TV], today more than ever, because we all have such complex, complicated layers, whether they’re social, whether they’re race, whether they’re colour, whether they’re just gender. I think it’s very important to be able to talk about the duality of identities, whether that’s Arab and American, Arab and British, Arabic and French, French and Chinese,” Abbas told The Guardian, earlier this year.
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May Calamawy (centre): Before landing a role on ‘The Long Road Home’ in 2017 across from Kate Bosworth and Jason Ritter, and getting a sisterly role in ‘Ramy’, the Egyptian-Palestinian actress starred in the first-ever Emirati horror film ‘Djinn’ in 2013. The Tobe Hooper-helmed supernatural feature crossed Dh1 million in its first week of release. 34-year-old Bahrain-born, Houston- and Doha-raised Calamawy did her undergrad in acting at Emerson College.
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Alia Shawkat: Born in California to an Iraqi father and a mother of Norwegian, Irish and Italian descent, Alia Shawkat is one of the more prominent actresses of Arab descent in Hollywood. She is well known for her role in comedy series ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Broad City’. Shawkat is set to star in the upcoming thriller show ‘The Old Man’ alongside Jeff Bridges. Shawkat told Bustle last year that she has never visited Iraq: “On a personal level, it feels like these two things — being American and being part Iraqi — both exist inside of me, but I’m just one person … The most that I can do is to try and communicate what’s happening by talking about it and to give another perspective of what it means to be Iraqi American through my art.”
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Tony Shalhoub: ‘Monk’ actor Tony Shalhoub — as you probably gleaned from the name — is from Lebanon. The four-time Tony Award winning actor, and Golden Globe recipient, is one of ten children. Shalhoub’s grandparents suffered a tragic end when they died during World War I, and his father Joseph had to come from Lebanon to America — via France — on a boat at the age of eight. “It really brings into sharp focus this sort of idea of the randomness of how I and my siblings ended up in the lives that we are in,” said Shalhoub.
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Salma Hayek: Salma Hayek recently thanked her father for her “Lebanese genes”. Half-Lebanese and half-Mexican, the Academy Award-winning actress has roots in the village of Baabdat. “Yesterday I took this picture with my father who turns 82 today. Thank you for those Lebanese genes baba!” she wrote on Instagram in 2019. Hayek also co-produced the 2015 animated film ‘The Prophet’ based on Gibran Khalil Gibran’s famed book, which she used as a vessel to connect with her Lebanese side. “For me this is a love letter to my heritage,” she said.
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Teri Hatcher: One of the lesser known facts on the list — Teri Hatcher is part Arab. The ‘Desperate Housewives’ actress’ mother is half Syrian. However, the topic of her Arab heritage hasn’t come up often in Hatcher’s interviews.
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Jerry Seinfeld: ‘Seinfeld’ comedian Jerry Seinfeld is half-Syrian. His mother’s family hails from Aleppo, Syria. His maternal grandparents were Mizrahi Jews named Selim Hosni and Salha Hosni. When they immigrated to the United States in 1917, they declared their nationality as Turkish because Syria was still part of the Ottoman Empire.
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Zoe Saldana: The ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ actress is Afro-Dominican on her father’s side and Puerto Rican on her mother’s side. However, Saldana also has Lebanese and Haitian roots. Not much information is available about her part-Arab origins.
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Wentworth Miller: The ‘Prison Break’ star is biracial, with his father being of mixed African American, Jamaican, German and English ancestry and his mother being a mix of Rusyn, Swedish, French, Dutch, Syrian and Lebanese.
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Sam Esmail: Arab-Muslim producer, director and screenwriter Sam Esmail is well known for creating the award-winning series ‘Mr Robot’ starring fellow Egyptian-American Rami Malek. He is also the director and producer behind the podcast-turned-web-series ‘Homecoming’ on Prime Video starring Julia Roberts. Since 2017, he has been married to ‘Shameless’ star Emmy Rossum.
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Waleed Zuaiter: ‘The Spy’ actor (and Oscar-nominated producer behind ‘Omar’) Waleed Zuaiter has made waves in Hollywood. The Palestinian-American actor currently plays the lead Iraqi character in StarzPlay series ‘Baghdad Central’, a role which has earned him a BAFTA nomination in the category of Leading Actor, where he’s up against John Boyega in Small Axe, Josh O’Connor from The Crown and more.
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Vince Vaughn: The ‘Wedding Crashers’ and ‘Internship’ actor is part Arab on his father’s side, with his paternal grandmother reported to be Lebanese. Some say that Vaugn’s grandma actually belongs to the Saba family.
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Ariana Grande: The former Disney star may have given up on acting (for now) to pursue singing, but did you know that Ariana Grande has North African roots? “Just found out my grandparents are heavily greek and part North African…vI thought I was Italian... who am I? My whole life is a lie,” she tweeted in 2014. Some speculate that she could have Algerian, Tunisian or Moroccan ancestry.
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Zain Al Rafeea (right): The ‘Capernaum’ star could be part of the next generation of crossover stars. A Syrian refugee, Al Rafeea was plucked out of the slums of Beirut to feature as the protagonist in Nadine Labaki’s Oscar-nominated film ‘Capernaum’, despite being an untrained actor. Since 2019, there have been rumours of his involvement and casting in Marvel’s ‘Eternals’, set to release later this year.
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Sandra Saad: Egyptian-American voice actress Sandra Saad is behind Pakistani superhero Ms Marvel in the new game ‘Marvel’s Avengers’. However, Saad has confessed that being an first generation Arab-American in Hollywood has its pitfalls, like risky roles. “Sometimes I get these scripts that are just dangerous to play,” she told the LA Times. “They would make me say things that are just horrible,” Saad continues. “Sometimes I need to ask my mom what it says, and one day she started tearing up. She said, ‘Please don’t do this to yourself. Please don’t do this to our people.’ A lot of these roles are political.”
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Catherine Keener: Two-time Academy Award nominee Catherine Keener (‘Being John Malkovich’, ‘Capote’) is of Irish descent on her father’s side and Lebanese descent on her mother’s side.
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Ali Suliman: Palestinian actor Ali Suliman has appeared in a variety of television shows and political dramas, including ‘Jack Ryan’ and ‘The Looming Tower’. He also appeared in ‘The Kingdom’. His breakout performance, however, was in Hany Abu Assad’s Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated film ‘Paradise Now’ in 2005.
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Ghassan Massoud: The Syrian actor and filmmaker — popular in Syrian television and film — is best known in Hollywood for his role as Saladin in Ridley Scott’s ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ in 2005. He turned down a role in ‘Syriana’ but later regretted his decision.
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Moustapha Akkad: The late Syrian-American producer and director Moustapha Akkad was best known for two very different things — one, producing the original series of Halloween films, and two, directing the historical and Islamic epic ‘The Message’ — even ambitiously filming two different versions of it, one in Arabic and one in English, starring Anthony Quinn.
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Michael Nouri: The ‘OC’, ‘NCIS’ and ‘All My Children’ actor has had a storied television career — and it all began when his Iraqi father, Edmond Nouri, immigrated to the United States on a Georgetown University scholarship.
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Paula Abdul: The Grammy Award-winning singer, dancer and actress is an American of Syrian descent. Her father Harry Abdul was born into a Syrian-Jewish community in Aleppo.
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Khaled Al Nabawy: With a rich career in Egyptian cinema and television, Khaled Al Nabawy broke into the West with the blockbuster film ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. He also starred alongside Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in ‘Fair Game’ and starred in the indie American film ‘The Citizen’.
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Mena Massoud: The Egyptian-Canadian actor broke out in a major way in 2019 as the titular character in Guy Ritchie’s ‘Aladdin’. The news of Massoud’s casting made a splash as fans praised Ritchie and Disney for committing to cast an Arab in the role. “I was 10 years old when 9/11 happened, and I think that really changed the landscape for Arabs around the world, obviously, but especially Arab actors — I think we started getting viewed a little differently,” he told Gulf News.
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Jaime Camil: Who knew that ‘Jane the Virgin’s beloved Rogelio de la Vega had a bit of Arab in him? Jaime Camil is Mexican though his father does have partial Egyptian heritage.
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Tahar Rahim: The French actor of Algerian descent has created a lot of buzz as the lead actor in Netflix’s ‘The Serpent’, a crime drama based on true events. The multilingual Taher Rahim is currently up for both a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his leading role in the film ‘The Mauritanian’ (2021).
Image Credit: BBC/Mammoth Screen
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