Published: 11 February 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
WALEED ZUAITER HAS THE look of a Hollywood icon: salt-and-pepper hair, five o’clock shadow, beaded wooden bracelets worn in a way that projects affluence rather than crustiness, and those intense leading-man eyes. In reality, his acting career has always dangled just out of reach of superstar status. Born in California, but raised in Kuwait, he’s been acting since taking theatre at college.
Now 49, he’s had chunky supporting roles in Homeland and The Spy, the Netflix mini-series about the life of Mossad agent Eli Cohen. His biggest break came in 2013, when he produced Omar, a film about love on the Palestinian border, which was nominated for an Oscar and in which Waleed also played a coercive Israeli agent.
He’s shared the stage with Meryl Streep, in a New York production of Mother Courage, and the screen with George Clooney, in the film adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare at Goats. But, until now, he’s never seen his own name given top billing.
We meet at the west London home of a very rich stranger, the kind of place where every fixture looks like it should be in a design museum: Vitsoe kitchen shelves, art deco chaises longues, a 6ft sculpture of the word “poo” on the toilet wall. The house has been loaned for a photoshoot, so while Waleed is spread out on the sofa looking every inch the celebrity, shoes kicked off, posing, I wait in the kitchen with his wife Joana.
Joana is a producing partner in a film fund they are setting up and “unofficially his unpaid assistant”. I’d been told she would be at the interview. But I’m surprised how open she is.
FULL STORY Waleed Zuaiter: ‘I know what loss means’ (Guardian)
Photo: Waleed Zuaiter, speaking about his role in Baghdad Central (Emma Hardy/The Observer)
