Rami Malek

Rami Said Malek, the Californian actor born to Egyptian immigrants on May 12, 1981. Malek studied theatre at the University Of Evansville in Indiana. He started out in television, with minor roles on The Gilmore Girls and Medium as well as doing voice over work for the video game HALO 2 . He began his film career with a supporting role in the Night At The Museum films in 2016.

Malek has an identical twin brother Sami born 5 minutes after him, who is an ESL/English teacher and he has an older sister Yasmine who is an ER doctor. His parents left Cairo in 1978 for Los Angeles as his father was fascinated by the west. After emigrating to the USA, his father Said Malek sold insurance whilst his mother Nelly Abdel-Malek was an accountant. His parents stressed the importance of preserving their Egyptian roots to Rami and his siblings, his father would wake him in the middle of the night to talk to his Arabic-speaking extended family in their hometown of Samalut, Egypt.

Rami felt it difficult to assimilate, being a first generation American and soon started to create different characters and voices as a way to cope. He attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, where he graduated in 1999 in the same class as actress Rachel Bilson. He also shared a musical theatre class with Kirsten Dunst who was in the year below him.

Malek’s parents wanted him to become a lawyer so he joined the debate team. His debate teacher could see he struggled with debate arguments but had a flair for dramatic interpretation, so encouraged him to perform a one man play called Zooman and The Sign at a competition. Reflecting on the moment, he said, “On stage I’m having this moment with my dad with a bunch of other people (in the audience), but then I thought, wow, something really special is happening here”. It was the first time he had seen his father emotional, after seeing his parents positive reaction to his performance he felt optimistic and free enough to pursue an acting career. He went on to receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 2003 after studying theatre at the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana.

After a stint living in New York, he returned to L.A to his parents home. He worked various jobs at local restaurants, whilst struggling to find work as an actor. He considered getting his real estate license and giving up on an acting career after bouts of depression and a loss of confidence. He finally received a call from a casting agent for The Gilmore Girls role and from there on continued to receive other work. He received his Screen Actors Guild Card in 2005, for his work on the Steven Bochco war drama Over There.

In 2010 he returned to TV to play a recurring role on the hit TV show 24 in which he played suicide bomber Marcos Al-Zacar. Growing tired of playing what he called “äcceptable terrorists” he instructed his agent to reject any roles that cast Arabs or Middle Easterners in a demeaning or negative light. He was then cast in the Emmy Award winning HBO series The Pacific later that year and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Corporal Merriell “Snafu” Shelton. Malek even received a letter from executive producer Tom Hanks praising Malek’s performance during filming. Hanks would later go on to cast Malek as college student Steve Dibiasi in the feature film Larry Crowne released in July 2011.

All of these opportunities led to more constant work in supporting roles in major films and T.V. including being cast as an “Egyptian coven” vampire in The Twilight Saga 2:Breaking Dawn-Part 2 in 2012. He then went on to appear in several movies over the next few years including two Spike Lee movies (Oldboy and Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus) and minor roles in Battleship, the Oscar nominated The Master and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.

In 2015 Malek received his big break with the lead role in the USA Network prime time TV show, Mr. Robot, a psychological drama. Screenwriter Sam Esmail auditioned over 100 actors to cast his new TV show and was considering rewriting the character altogether until he saw Malek audition for the part. He was so impressed with Malek’s interpretation of the role of lead character, Elliot Anderson (a mentally unstable computer hacker,) that he said “It opened my eyes to who Elliot really was.””. Malek even met with a psychiatrist to accurately portray his character who suffers from mental and social disorders. He received high praise from critics and numerous nominations for awards for this role. He won the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He was the first Egyptian actor to win an Emmy in that category since 1998.

In 2016 he received his first starring role in a major movie, playing a man leading two lives, one as Jonah and one as Buster in the movie Buster’s Mal Heart. The director Sarah Adina Smith had already cast him in this movie before Mr Robot. She had no idea how successful and popular he was to become, he again received mostly praise from critics. He then went on to star in the remake of the 1973 film Papillon, co-starring Charlie Hunnam, and joined the cast of Bojack Horseman (season 4) in 2017.

In 2018, his movie status hit the stratosphere with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic, Malek portrayed the bands’ singer and frontman Freddie Mercury. It was an immediate major box office success and went on to gross over $844 million worldwide on a production budget of just $50 million. It has now become the highest grossing musical biographical film of all time, and the sixth highest grossing film of 2018. He has won numerous awards including the BAFTA, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild and the Academy Award for Best Actor. Malek did extensive research, training and preparation for this role, including moving to London to train and rehearse with a dialect coach and movement coach, taking singing and piano lessons. He watched the Live Aid live performance of Queen over 1500 times, studying it for up to four hours each day with his movement coach to perfect his performance. Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, who attended much of the filming to oversee and offer perspective on the history of the group, is quoted as saying that Malek’s performance is so accurate that “we sometimes forgot he was Rami”.

Already Rami considers this his masterpiece and by far the most important of his career saying, ”This is a role I don’t think can be outdone. I think we’re always searching for that next great role, and I guess I’m fortunate that I’ve already been met with it. I’d like to think that there is more out there for me to do, and there is, but I do doubt that there is anything that lives up to how precious this role and this human being have been in my life.”

Malek is definitely not resting on his laurels though and is already hard at work on his next projects, hoping to write, direct and produce himself on a small scale budget. He is also still starring in his breakout role of Elliot Anderson in Mr Robot and has finished voiceover work for another major film The Voyage Of Dr Doolittle which is due out in 2020.

Malek has been nominated for and won several major industry awards. For his work on Mr. Robot, he has been nominated for two Golden Globes, an Emmy, two Satellite Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, among others, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2016. He won a Golden Globe for the Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in Bohemian Rhapsody. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the same film, making him the first actor of Egyptian descent to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.