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Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abdurrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi is a Sudanese-born English actor and director. He is known professionally as Siddig El Fadil and subsequently as Alexander Siddig. He is highly credited for playing Doran Martell in the Game of Thrones series, Dr. Julian Bashir in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, former terrorist Hamri Al-Assad in the sixth season of the series 24.
Background
Ethnicity:
He has Sudanese ancestry on his father’s side and English ancestry on his mother’s side.
Siddig was born on November 21, 1965, in Omdurman, Sudan, to the family of Tahir and Gloria. His mother was English and his father is Sudanese. Gloria was also the older sister of actor Malcolm McDowell.
Siddig El Fadil's parents met each other in the 1960s when his mother traveled to Sudan with a friend who introduced her to Siddig's father, who was a member of Sudan's ruling family. Siddig's father was a student at Cambridge University in the 1950s and was proficient in English. Siddig's uncle Sadiq al-Mahdi served as the Prime Minister of Sudan from 1966 to 1967 and from 1986 to 1989. Siddig is also the great-great-grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, a Nubian religious leader who was proclaimed the Mahdi by his disciples.
Gloria stayed in Sudan for three years and returned to London with Siddig and his father. Siddig was 2 years old at the time. Siddig spoke Arabic when he was young, but is no longer able to speak or understand the language. He had forgotten the language within two years of moving to London. In 1978 his mother married film director and producer Michael Birkett and in 1982 the two had a son together named Thomas. Siddig's mother worked as a model and theatrical press agent.
Education
Siddig was educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate. During his years at St Lawrence, he concentrated on geography and anthropology, intending to help his native country in the future. But soon he understood that acting is more interesting to him. He transferred to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts to be trained in acting.
After leaving LAMDA, Siddig worked in theatre as both an actor and director. Siddig's first television role was a Palestinian man in a British six-part miniseries called The Big Battalions (released in 1992) and shortly afterward he won the role of Prince Feisal in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, a 1990 telefilm sequel to Lawrence of Arabia starring Ralph Fiennes.
Siddig's role in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia brought him to the attention of Rick Berman, executive producer of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993). Berman originally considered Siddig for the role of Commander Benjamin Sisko, the main character, but decided in the end that Siddig was too young for the role and cast him as Dr. Julian Bashir. Siddig remained with Deep Space Nine for all seven seasons of the series. He also directed the episodes "Business as Usual" (1997) and "Profit and Lace" (1998). In 1995 Siddig also changed his name from Siddig El Fadil to Alexander Siddig.
Siddig told Bidoun magazine that there was an increased demand for Islamic and Arabic character roles in both film and television after the September 11 attacks and that people began to approach him with projects within six months of the event. He played a mountain guide in the thriller film Vertical Limit (2000), starring Chris O'Donnell, and Ajay in the post-apocalyptic science fantasy film Reign of Fire (2002) starring Christian Bale. In 2003 Siddig played the role of an Algerian secret agent on the trail of Islamists in the controversial episode "Nest of Angels" of the British television show Spooks (known as MI-5 in the United States) Siddig appeared in a cameo role as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the film The Hamburg Cell that premiered the following year.
In 2005 Siddig returned to the live stage, playing the role of Doctor Scott in production of Whose Life Is It Anyway? starring Kim Cattrall that played at the Comedy Theatre in London. That same year Siddig appeared as Saladin's aide, Imad, in Ridley Scott's 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven and starred alongside George Clooney and Matt Damon as Prince Nasir in the film Syriana. Siddig played the title role in the BBC's 2006 telefilm Hannibal. In 2007, he starred in A Lost Man (French title Un Homme Perdu) a French-language film that screened at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year Siddig played the role of former terrorist Hamri Al-Assad in the sixth season of 24.
In 2009, he co-starred with Patricia Clarkson in the award-winning film Cairo Time as Tareq Khalifa, an Egyptian who battles his attraction to his friend's wife. Directed by Canadian director Ruba Nadda, the film won the prize for "Best Canadian Feature Film" at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. He also played Jamal in Julian Schnabel’s 2010 film Miral.
Siddig played Philip Burton in series 4 and 5 of the ITV science-fiction drama programme Primeval; both series aired in 2011. In 2012, Siddig again worked with director Nadda and played the starring role as a Syrian-Canadian businessman in the film Inescapable, which also starred Marisa Tomei and Joshua Jackson. In 2013 Siddig narrated the BBC Two nature documentary series Wild Arabia and played the role of Minos in the first series of the BBC fantasy-adventure programme Atlantis.
From 2013 to 2015 Siddig played Aslan Al-Rahim (aka "The Turk") in the BBC historical fantasy drama series Da Vinci's Demons. In 2015 and 2016 he appeared in the HBO series Game of Thrones; Siddig played the role of Doran Martell, the ruling Prince of Dorne, in the series' fifth and sixth seasons. He also played Reuben Oliver, an artist and suitor of Polly Shelby, in the third season the British series Peaky Blinders. Siddig also provided the voice of Wolf, a character in the historical fantasy drama Tumanbay that aired on BBC Radio 4 between December 2015 and February 2016. In 2017 Siddig joined the cast of the television's series Gotham as League of Shadows leader Ra’s al Ghul and also played the part of Aristotle Onassis in the drama miniseries The Kennedys: After Camelot. In 2019, he appeared in the Netflix series The Spy as Ahmed Suidani, a Syrian security officer. That same year he appeared as Issouf Al Moctar in the second season of the Fox (UK and Ireland) thriller series Deep State.
Achievements
Alexander Siddig has done quite a ton of roles in his career as an actor, but he is most popular for portraying the characters of Dr. Julian in the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Philip Burton in Primeval, the Carthaginian general Hannibal in Hannibal, and King Minos in Atlantis.
Quotations:
"I wish everybody was just ethnically ambiguous. It would make life a lot easier."
"Something most people don't know about me is that I never grew up."
"There's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles."
"Bin Laden actually is the most European or westernized of all the Arab leaders. He's the one who is the most polished ironically. He's smart and handsome and rich... you know, he's quite the eligible guy. Well trained by the CIA. He's a very dangerous man indeed and he now has this franchise called Al Qaeda, which rivals Starbucks in its ubiquity."
"The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation."
Personality
Originally credited as "Siddig El Fadil," he changed his professional name to "Alexander Siddig" because (as reported by him at Star Trek conventions) nobody could pronounce "El Fadil."
Physical Characteristics:
Build: slim
Height: 5 ft 11 in (180.5 cm)
Weight: 72 kg (159 lbs)
Hair color: dark brown
Eye color: green
Distinctive features: thick eyebrows; bearded jawline; defined eyelashes; thin lips
Interests
Wine collecting, role-playing games, gardening, home projects
Connections
Siddig met Nana Visitor on the set of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Their son, Django El Tahir El Siddig, was born on 16 September 1996 and Visitor's pregnancy was written into the storyline of Deep Space Nine. Django is Siddig's first child and Visitor's second son. The couple were married in 1997 and divorced in 2001.
Father:
El Tahir El Mahdi
Mother:
Gloria Taylor
ex-spouse:
Nana Visitor
(born July 26, 1957)
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Sadiq al-Mahdi, also known as Sadiq as-Siddiq, is a Sudanese political and religious figure who was Prime Minister of Sudan from 1966 to 1967 and again from 1986 to 1989. Wikipedia
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