Fares Fares

Though best known to audiences in his native Scandinavia for comic turns in films like "Jalla! Jalla!" (2000), actor Fares Fares made a name for himself in dramatic features, often playing men of determination in films like "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012) and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016), as well as series like "Westworld" (HBO, 2016-). Born in Beirut, Lebanon to Swedish and Lebanese parents, he relocated to Sweden in his early teens during the final years of the Lebanese Civil War. He became involved with acting through a theater group in his new hometown Öfrebro, and later studied drama near Gothenburg and with the Theatre Tamauer. In the late '90s, he teamed with his brother, Josef, who was attempting to launch his own career as a director; together, the siblings wrote the script for the Swedish production company Memfis Film. The company passed on their first effort, but purchased their next script, a cultural comedy about a park worker who runs afoul of his Lebanese family's traditions when he introduces them to his Swedish girlfriend. Directed by Josef and starring Fares, "Jalla! Jalla!: was a sizable hit, and led to more collaborations, including the satirical "Kopps" (2003), with Fares as an officer with a police force starved for action, and a semi-autobiographical drama, "Zozo" (2005), about a Lebanese boy who comes to Sweden after being separated from his family. Fares' dream of working in Hollywood came to pass in 2010, when director Daniel Espinosa - an assistant on "Jalla! Jalla!" - cast him in the crime drama "Easy Money" (2010), with Joel Kinnaman. The success of the film led to more roles in Stateside features, including Espinosa's "Safe House" (2012) and the Richard Price-penned "Child 44" (2015), and Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," which cast him as a CIA operative assisting in the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin. Fares also continued to work in European films, most notably a popular trio of thrillers, including "Keeper of Lost Causes" (2014), based on the novels of Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Thomas Vinterberg's critically praised "The Commune" (2016). His widest exposure may have come with a small role as a galactic senator in Gareth Edwards' "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: though he soon added another role in a wildly popular science fiction franchise when he joined the cast of "Westworld" in its second season as a technician investigating the massacre that capped the first season's concluding episode.