Cairo – Masaader News
Born to Egyptian parents in Los Angeles, the Bohemian Rhapsody star rejected typecasting roles as a terrorist before being invited to play Freddie Mercury, according to The Guardian.
His performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Remarkably, it’s a role he almost never played: Ali G and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen was originally earmarked, before disagreements with Queen band members who were producing the project; another actor, Ben Whishaw, was named by Queen guitarist Brian May as his preferred choice, before Malek was asked.
Malek said that taking the role was a “kind of the gun-to-the-head moment”. “What do you do? … The scariest endeavours that I’ve chosen to take in my life have been the most fulfilling and rewarding. And this has proven to defend that equation.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1981 to a family of Egyptian immigrants from Minya, Malek spoke Arabic in his childhood and was raised in the Coptic Orthodox faith. He says he grew up in a diverse, multicultural community in the San Fernando Valley, among Latinos, Filipinos and Asians but found it “difficult … forming a sense of identity”. He also attended Notre Dame, a Catholic high school in Sherman Oaks, at the same time as Kirsten Dunst and The Last Kiss star Rachel Bilson.
Malek found his Middle Eastern background a help as well as a hindrance when it came to starting out as an actor: early roles included the pharaoh in all three Night at the Museum films, an Egyptian vampire in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and as a terrorist in 24. It was this last role, which aired in 2010 that prompted him to refuse any negative portrayals of Arabs. He told GQ: “In the past it was like, ‘Oh well, he’s an acceptable terrorist! He’s an accessible terrorist! … But after I did [24] I said to myself, ‘You know what? Bullshit. No more. This is not how I want it.’ …. Any calls that come about playing Arabs or Middle Easterners in a negative light? I don’t need to respond to any of them any more. No more of this.”