Art Malik

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Art Malik (born as Athar Ul-Haque Malik on November 13, 1952) is a Pakistani-born British actor.

He was born in Bahawalpur, Punjab, the son of a physician who would soon qualify as an ophthalmic surgeon in England, and brought to London at age 2½ with his four older brothers. At age 10 he was sent to school in Quetta, Balochistan for one year.

Malik is mildly dyslexic and found academic studies trying; after an unsatisfactory stint of business studies he won a scholarship to Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before long, he was working with the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies.

In 1982, five years after leaving the Guildhall, Malik was cast as the doomed young Indian Hari Kumar in the ITV production of The Jewel in the Crown, based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. During filming, David Lean cast him in his film production of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India; the two high profile and successful productions assuring his professional future. He also appeared in a television serialisation of M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. All three were released in 1984.

Malik has been closely associated with Tom Stoppard's play Indian Ink, creating the role of Narid in the work's London premiere, and returning to the role for the 1999 American premiere at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre.

He played the role of the son of an Indian mobster in the 1992 film City of Joy. Malik also played the villain Salim Abu Aziz opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). He made a move to American television in 1988 playing Dr. Ved Lahari on the ABC series Hothouse. He had a major role as an Afghani mujahadeen ally of James Bond in the Timothy Dalton 007 film The Living Daylights (1987). He also played the role of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Path to Paradise, a 1997 made-for-TV film about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 2001, he narrated the television documentary Hajj: The Journey of a Lifetime for British television. He played Dr Zubin Khan in the BBC hospital drama Holby City from 2003-05.

Art Malik has not been notably forthcoming in interactions with the media; he gave a disobliging interview for use in publicising BBC's Holby City (see link, below); on the other hand he engagingly played along with Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and company during an appearance on "The Kumars at No. 42."

Malik took a major role in fundraising for relief work for victims of the Gujarat earthquake in 1998. He lives with his wife Gina Rowe, who was his fellow student at the Guildhall, and whom he married in 1980, in Surbiton, Greater London. They have two daughters, Jessica and Keira.