Art Malik (born November 13, 1952) is a Pakistani-born British actor.
Malik was born Athar Ul-Haque Malik in Bahawalpur, Punjab, the son of Zaibunisa and Mazhar Ul-Haque Malik, a physician who would soon qualify as an ophthalmic surgeon in England. Malik was thus brought to London in 1956 with his four older brothers. At age 10 he was sent to school in Quetta, Balochistan for one year, and then Bec Grammar School, a selective state school in Balham, London.
Malik is mildly dyslexic and found academic studies trying; after an unsatisfactory stint of business studies he won a scholarship to Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before long, he was working with the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies.
In 1982, five years after leaving the Guildhall, Malik was cast as the doomed young Indian Hari Kumar in the ITV production of The Jewel in the Crown, based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. During filming, David Lean cast him in his film production of A Passage to India; the two high profile and successful productions assuring his professional future. He also appeared in a television serialisation of M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. All three were released in 1984.
Malik has been closely associated with Tom Stoppard's play Indian Ink, creating the role of Narid in the work's London premiere, and returning to the role for the 1999 American premiere at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater.
He played the role of the son of an Indian mobster in the 1992 film City of Joy. Malik also played the villain Salim Abu Aziz opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). He made a move to American television in 1988 playing Dr. Ved Lahari on the ABC series Hothouse. He had a major role as an Afghani mujahadeen ally of James Bond in the Timothy Dalton 007 film The Living Daylights (1987). He also played the role of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Path to Paradise, a 1997 made-for-TV film about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 2001, he narrated the television documentary Hajj: The Journey of a Lifetime for British television. He played Dr Zubin Khan in the BBC hospital drama Holby City from 2003-05.
Malik took a major role in fundraising for relief work for victims of the Gujarat earthquake in 1998. He lives with his wife Gina Rowe, who was his fellow student at the Guildhall, and whom he married in 1980, in Surbiton, Greater London. They have two daughters, Jessica and Keira.
In 2002, Daniel Williams, Jessica's boyfriend, was found dead in the swimming pool of the Malik family home in Surbiton. He was 23 years old.
