Art Malik

Born: November 13 1942
Where: Bahawalpur, Pakistan

The actor has graduated from colonial epics such as A Passage to India and The Jewel in the Crown to roles such as Bond ally Kamran Shah in The Living Daylights.

He also played Arnold Schwarzenneger's nemesis Salim Abu Aziz in the 007-style action thriller True Lies.

The son of a Pakistani eye surgeon, the Malik family moved to England when he was a child and settled in south London.

When he was ten, Malik was sent back to Pakistan to attend boarding school at Quetta, near the Aghan border, before returning to Britain.

He attended Bec Grammar and decided he wanted to act after appearing in The Pen of my Aunt.

In 1974, after an abortive attempt at business studies, Malik won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Five years later Hari Kumar cast him in the internationally acclaimed Jewel In the Crown and David Lean hired him for A Passage to India.

Subsequent roles followed all over the world in Morocco (Living Daylights), New York (Hothouse), Australia (Shadow of the Cobra), Thailand (Turtle Beach), and India (City of Joy).

He made a short-lived bid to work in Los Angeles in 1992 but returned the following year to work on James Cameron's True Lies.

Rather than return after the film was released in the 1994, Malik remained in England to work A Kid in the Court of King Arthur and Clockwork Mice.

Confining himself mainly to British TV, he notched up appearances in Colour Blind, Vicious Circle and Messiah.

Minor big screen roles included Side Streets, Outdone and Temp as well as the part of an urbane crime lord in the caper Fakers.