Villains No More?

With the Asians now taking on stereotypical villain roles in Hollywood, Arab actors are finding themselves out of a job. Lebanese actor Said Faraj is staying on top and breaking out of the mold.

By Sherif Awad

After the terror attacks of 9/11, it was expected that the Arab or Arab-American would emerge across different outings of the entertainment industry in Hollywood as the stereotypical main villain. Many episodes of the thrilling TV series 24 starring Kieffer Sutherland featured Arab villains smuggling chemical or nuclear weapons into the United States; the first Iron Man (2008) had Egyptian-American actor Sayed Badreya playing a terrorist who kidnaps the American millionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to push him to create an armored suit. And on and on it went. But there are other directors working to challenge the Hollywood stereotyping. Egyptian-American Hisham Issawi directed the narrative short T for Terrorist (2003) that featured Badreya playing a struggling actor tired of being typecast as the villain. Issawi followed this acclaimed short with the long narrative AmericanEast (2008) that starred Badreya and Tony Shalhoub respectively playing an Arab-American and an American Jew who became friends and business partners to the surprise of their communities. Today times are changing, and so are the villains in recent American action films and series (most are now Chinese, Russian or generally Asian) — which means that many Arab-American actors will face difficulties landing roles. One talent constantly striving to reinvent himself in the course of the current casting changes is Lebanese-American actor Said Faraj, who has been working in Hollywood for 24 years. His journey to the United States started in 1983, during the civil war in Lebanon, which he fled with only $235 in his pocket. At that time, it was easier to get a short tourist visa to the US, and Faraj was also lucky enough to get his passport with the visa stamped minutes before the US Embassy in Beirut was blown up by Palestinian jihadists. His plane leaving Beirut to Jordan and then on to Los Angeles was also the last one to fly from Beirut Airport before its shutdown that lasted for years. “When I arrived in LA, I was only 16. I started to look for my uncle who was living somewhere in North Hollywood,” remembers Faraj. “He helped me to find a place to stay and to join a school to work on my English language. Because I only had a visa for 10 days, few agreed to give me a job. In the following two years, I moved between jobs maybe 22 times. The last job I had was as a pizza delivery boy in a shop that happened to be next to Burbank Studios. Every day I used to go to take a look at the facilities and dream of performing inside. I’ve been in love with acting since I saw a TV adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables back home in Lebanon during my childhood.” It took Faraj six years to land some kind of acting role. It first happened when his teacher gave him a business card of a casting director who got Faraj his first breakthrough as one of the background extras in a Hollywood production. “I worked for 18 months as a non-talking extra until one day I met this manager who gave me my first acting role,” recalls Faraj about his first talkie role alongside David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair in the TV film W.B. Blue and the Bean (1989). Other bit roles followed in many popular films we know: Faraj played a clerk in Bad Influence (1990), a taxi driver in Ghost (1990) and again a clerk in Darkman (1990). “I managed to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which helped me get a union ID card and legally work as an entertainer in America,” explains Faraj. “At that time, I was paid like $500 for every working day.” During the 1990s, Faraj worked back to back in cinema and television. He never said no to anything he was offered, and the producers and the casting directors were always looking for someone like him. Faraj appeared in popular films like Tony Scott’s True Romance (1993), The Fan (1996) starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes, and The Siege with Denzel Washington but he passed unnoticed by many Arab viewers. “I was working without taking acting classes and with no worries about the box office results of such blockbusters since I was not top billed,” says Faraj with a laugh. “Even before 9/11, the angrier an Arab actor was during the casting calls, the more chances he had of landing the role. Sometimes, they used to cast a Latin or Indian actors with black hair and dark eyes to stand for an Arab if they could not find one.” In the early 2000s, Faraj changed strategy by taking acting classes and accepting bigger and more influential roles including some recurring roles in series like ER, The Shield, The Unit and 24. “When I used to go to these auditions, my role could be written in 15 pages. But in fast-paced series like 24, it gets edited and cut to favor the action over the supporting characters,” Faraj says. A turning point in Faraj’s career came when he was offered the role of Seyyed Hamz, a military adjunct to a top Ba’ath Party general, in Paul Greengrass’ The Green Zone (2010) beating hundreds of actors who auditioned from the US, Morocco, Spain and even Egypt. “Some of the film producers claimed I was relatively unknown and unfit to do the role but Paul Greengrass said this is guy I want,” reveals Faraj. “I then asked my LA-based friend, Iraqi actor and casting director Sam Sako, to help me perfect the Ba’ath dialect necessary for the role. Working with Greengrass and [Matt] Damon was also great. Greengrass loved improvisation to the point he left the camera rolling for 45 minutes in one scene in which I acted opposite Damon.” This year has been a busy one for Faraj, who appeared in more than 10 films. One of them is a short drama called The American Failure which he also produced. “It is a cross between And Justice for All with Al Pacino and The Fugitive with Harrison Ford,” explains Faraj. “I play a prestigious lawyer called Carlos Alias who is involved with the mob while being tracked down by two undercover detectives. The film is about double and triple crossing and also about how someone loses himself to corruption after having everything. We presented the film at the latest Cannes Festival with hopes to get funding to develop it into a feature thriller in the future.” Look for Said Faraj in the new films Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage and The Algerian out next year. et