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Art Malik

Art Malik is a British actor whose career has moved easily between theatre, film and television, often drawing on a screen presence that can suggest authority, intelligence or danger without reducing a character to a single note. Born Athar ul-Haque Malik in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, on 13 November 1952, he moved to London with his family in 1956 after his father took a surgical post at Moorfields Eye Hospital. After business studies proved a poor fit, Malik studied acting briefly at The Questors Theatre before winning a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Work with The Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies followed, establishing the stage as an important part of a career that would remain unusually varied. His major television breakthrough came as Hari Kumar in Granada Television’s 1982 adaptation of The Jewel in the Crown, based on Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet. On the big screen, he played Afghan mujahideen leader Kamran Shah, an ally of James Bond, in The Living Daylights. He later appeared in City of Joy and took on his first major film villain, Salim Abu Aziz, opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies. Although that performance led to further action-film offers, Malik turned several down, explaining that he did not want to make action movies that “weren’t as good.” He chose Clockwork Mice instead. Malik’s work has continued to cross genres and countries. He led the original Guildford and West End production of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, appeared as Cleopatra’s court doctor Olympos in the miniseries Cleopatra, and starred in the historical series Borgia. In Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, his first film produced in India, he played Milkha Singh’s father. Later television roles included retired Pakistani general Bunran “Bunny” Latif in Homeland, with appearances in seasons four and eight, as well as parts in Bancroft, Doc Martin and Doctor Who. It is a career shaped less by one fixed persona than by Malik’s willingness to move between classical theatre, international drama and large-scale entertainment.