[7][8][9] His parents and older sister left Cairo in 1978 after his father, a travel agent and tour guide, became intrigued with Western visitors.

[20] His parents emphasized to their children the importance of preserving their Egyptian roots, and his father would wake him up in the middle of the night to talk on the phone to his Arabic-speaking extended family in Samalut.

[5][10] Though he struggled to form arguments, his debate teacher noted his talent in dramatic interpretation and encouraged him instead to perform the Charles Fuller play Zooman and The Sign at a competition.

'"[28] It was the first time he saw his father become emotional,[28] and his parents' positive reaction to his performance left him feeling free to pursue an acting career.

[29][30] During the summer before his senior year, he interned at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where he became an acquaintance of playwright August Wilson.

[10][33] The college later honored him with a 2017 Young Alumnus Award, given to those who have "achieved personal success and contribute services to their community and to UE".

[28][35] His network of friends included writers and directors, many of whom would come together to form the Slant Theatre Project, and they would perform their own plays around the city.

[28][36][35] While visiting his family in Los Angeles, Malek met casting director Mali Finn, who convinced him to stay and look for work in Hollywood.

[37] Despite sending his resume to production houses, he found it difficult to get work as an actor, which led to bouts of depression and a loss of confidence.

[43] Later that year, he appeared in an episode of Medium and was cast in the prominent recurring role of Kenny, on the Fox comedy series The War at Home.

[9] In the spring of 2007, he appeared on-stage as Jamie in the Vitality Productions theatrical presentation of Keith Bunin's The Credeaux Canvas at the Elephant Theatre in Los Angeles.

[47][48] Malek returned to television in 2010 in a recurring role as the suicide bomber Marcos Al-Zacar on the eighth season of the Fox series 24.

[49] Growing weary of playing characters he called "acceptable terrorists", he instructed his agent to reject any role that painted Arabs or Middle Easterners in a "bad light".

[4] Later that year, he received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Corporal Merrill "Snafu" Shelton in the Emmy Award-winning HBO World War II mini-series The Pacific.

[50][51] After the intensity of filming The Pacific, he chose to leave Hollywood and lived briefly in Argentina,[52] though he says it was unsuccessful, and he has "since found better ways of coping".

In August 2010, it was announced that he had been cast as the "Egyptian coven" vampire, Benjamin, in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.

[56] In 2013 he played Nate, a new employee at a group home for youths, in the indie film Short Term 12, opposite Brie Larson.

[60] Screenwriter Sam Esmail had auditioned over 100 actors to play the lead character of Elliot Alderson (a mentally unstable computer-hacker) for a show he was developing.

[64] Backstage remarked that Malek "anchored the drama" and that his "spin" on the anti-hero trope "promises a fresh direction for prestige TV".

[66][67] The show concluded in December 2019 with its fourth season, for which Malek received a third Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama.

Robot won't be disappointed in the least by this vehicle for Emmy-winning series star Rami Malek, which both fits in with Mr.

[77] In 2017, Malek joined the cast of the Netflix animated comedy series BoJack Horseman (season 4), voicing the character Flip McVicker, a writer who does not trust email.

Scott Conroy was the writer of the podcast, a thriller about a small-town radio DJ who must "fight to protect his family and community from a coordinated attack that destroys the power grid and upends modern civilization".

[97] On April 25, 2019, Malek was cast as the main villain in the James Bond film No Time to Die; he plays the "supervillain" Lyutsifer Safin.

Malek was part of the all-star ensemble cast in David O. Russell's Amsterdam;[103] the film was produced in early 2021 and released in October 2022.

He lost significant weight to play Elliot Alderson,[117] Freddie Mercury,[118] and Snafu Shelton, where Tom Hanks required that he maintain between six and eight-percent body fat.

[119] He noted the most valuable lesson from that experience was learning to distance himself from his characters, otherwise he would not have been able to take on complex roles later in his career, like Elliot Alderson in Mr.

[27] The Globe and Mail, in an interview after the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, described the actor as "startlingly handsome ... with tawny skin and close-cropped curly hair.

[123] Placing him at number 29 on its list of Best Dressed Men 2019, GQ called his looks, "neat, elegant and perfectly put together, ... experimental on the surface, but underneath they're also surprisingly approachable".

[142] The organization Human Rights Watch stated that the country deserved an Oscar for hypocrisy for praising Malek, given its prohibition on LGBT people being celebrated in the media.