Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abdurrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi (born 21 November 1965) is a British actor and director known professionally as Siddig El Fadil and subsequently as Alexander Siddig.
Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abdurrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi[1][2][nb 1] was born on 21 November 1965[3][4] in Omdurman, Sudan.[5] His father, Tahir El Mahdi, was Sudanese; his mother, Gloria (née Taylor; d. 2001) was English.[1][2][6][7] She was the older sister of actor Malcolm McDowell.[1][8]
Siddig's parents met in the 1960s when his mother travelled to Sudan with a friend who introduced her to Siddig's father.[1] Siddig's father was a student at Cambridge University in the 1950s and was proficient in English.[1] Siddig's uncle Sadiq al-Mahdi was Prime Minister of Sudan from 1966–1967 and again from 1986–1989.[1][9] Siddig is also the great-great-grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, a Nubian religious leader who was proclaimed the Mahdi by his disciples.[1][9]
Siddig's mother remained in Sudan for three years and returned to London with Siddig and his father.[1][3] Siddig was two years old at the time.[3] Siddig initially spoke Arabic when he was a child, but by his second year of living in Britain he had forgotten much of it.[1] In 1978, his mother married film director and producer Michael Birkett, and in 1982, the two had a son together named Thomas.[6] Siddig's mother worked as a model and theatrical press agent.[7]
After leaving LAMDA, Siddig worked in theatre as both an actor and director.[3][11][12] Siddig's first television role was a Palestinian man in a British six-part miniseries called The Big Battalions (filmed in 1989 but 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.[3][12]
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).[3] Berman originally considered Siddig for the role of Commander Benjamin Sisko, but decided in the end that Siddig was too young for the role and cast him as Dr. Julian Bashir.[3] Siddig remained with Deep Space Nine for all seven seasons of the series.[1] He also directed the episodes "Business as Usual" (1997) and "Profit and Lace" (1998).[13][14] In 1995, Siddig also changed his stage name from Siddig El Fadil to Alexander Siddig.[4]
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.[1] 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.[1][12] 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 US).[15][16] Siddig appeared in a cameo role as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the film The Hamburg Cell that premiered the following year.[1]
Siddig played the title role in the BBC's 2006 tele-film Hannibal.[21] In 2007 he starred in A Lost Man (French title Un Homme Perdu) a French language film that screened at the Cannes Film Festival.[12][22] That same year Siddig played the role of former terrorist Hamri Al-Assad in the sixth season of 24.[23][12]
Siddig played Philip Burton in series 4 and 5 of the ITV science-fiction drama programme Primeval; both series aired in 2011.[2][26] 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.[27][28]
From 2013 to 2015, Siddig played Aslan Al-Rahim (aka "The Turk") in the BBC historical fantasy drama series Da Vinci's Demons.[12][31] 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.[32] He also played Reuben Oliver, an artist and suitor of Polly Shelby, in the third season of the British series Peaky Blinders.[33] 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.
Siddig began a relationship with Nana Visitor whilst working on the set of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.[40] 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.[8][40] Django is Siddig's first child and Visitor's second son.[40] The couple married in 1997 and later divorced in 2001.[40][41]
In an April 2024 interview, Siddig described his sexuality as "not quite straight".[42]
^ abCole, Maxine (2 August 1998). "Your Page". The Daily Oklahoman TV This Week. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. p. 17. Retrieved 20 April 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
^Harris, Will (19 July 2015). "Alexander Siddig on being Bashir, quitting 24, and getting saddle-sore for Ridley Scott". The A.V. Club. Chicago, Illinois, United States. Retrieved 20 April 2020. So I did that, and then I was also born in Omdurman, which is in Sudan, which is where the confluence of the Nile, where this great river passes through, so I'm intimately acquainted with the most important thing about ancient Egypt, which is the river.
^Mack, Peter (1981). "A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Review of the Production". The Lawrentian, Vol.LXXXI, No.1. Ramsgate, Kent, UK. Siddig El Fadil as Puck was full of energy and mischief.
