Art Malik

Art Malik Biography

Art Malik as Kamran Shah

Art Malik, born Athar ul-Haque Malik on November 13, 1952, in Bahawalpur, is a Pakistani-born British actor best known for starring roles in 1980s and 90s films and British television.

Malik was brought to London in 1956, aged three, when his father got a job as a surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital. He attended Bec Grammar School in Tooting from the age of eleven and later won a scholarship to Guildhall School of Music where he met his future wife.

Art Malik’s big break in acting came in 1982, five years after leaving Guildhall, when he was cast as Hari Kumar in the Granada Television period drama of The Jewel in the Crown.

Kraken

He went on to play Kamran Shah, an Afghan Mujahideen leader, in the 1987 film The Living Daylights, a 007 film where he allied with James Bond to bring down the Russians. In 1994, he played Salim Abu Aziz, a stereotypical Islamist, opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies. He was offered further work as villains, but turned them down saying nothing would be comparable to True Lies. He then took the lead role in the West End production of Tom Stoppard’s 1995 play Indian Ink.

Over the years, Art Malik has played a diverse range of characters in film and television, including Olympos, the court doctor to Cleopatra in Cleopatra, and the role of the son of an Indian mobster in the 1992 film City of Joy. He also narrated the television documentary Hajj: The Journey of a Lifetime in 2001 and The British Empire in Colour in 2002.

More recently, Malik has appeared in several productions, including the 2016 film Mirzya, Halal Daddy a year later, and in 2023, he played Grimsby in The Little Mermaid in 2023.

He has also made guest appearances in popular TV shows such as Sherlock, Doc Martin and Doctor Who. Art Malik is married to Gina Rowe, a fellow student at the Guildhall whom he married in 1980. They have two daughters, Jessica and Keira.