Fayssal Bazzi

His parents transferred him to a Catholic school, and he eventually learned English after a teacher decided to personally teach him.

As a child he was a fan of Star Wars and anime, so he was keen to work in the fantasy genre, however in the aftermath of 9/11 he found that he was pigeonholed as an Arab man, in terms of the way the industry viewed him.

After securing an agent, Bazzi started attending screen auditions in the early to mid-2000s, but based on the amount of rejection he experienced based on his ethnic background, he realised the theatre culture was more progressive than screen, allowing him a lot more casting scope and creative and cultural input.

[10][11] While touring Australia with a play called Food, Bazzi secured a part on the film Down Under – a black comedy based on the racial tensions in the wake of the real-life 2005 Cronulla riots.

In the latter series, he starred opposite Cate Blanchett, Yvonne Strahovski, Jai Courtney, Dominic West and Asher Keddie, and had to learn to speak Dari, an Afghan language.