Art Malik (born as Athar Ul-Haque Malik on November 13, 1952) is a Pakistani-born British actor. 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 EM Forster’s A Passage to India; the two high profile and successful productions assuring his professional future. He also appeared in a television serialisation of MM Kaye’s The Far Pavilions. All three were released in 1984.
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 Kamran Shah, an Afghani mujahadeen ally of James Bond in the Timothy Dalton 007 film The Living Daylights (1987).