Rami Malek Recalls Being Racially Profiled Because He 'Fit the Description' of a Robber
Acadamy Award-winning actor Rami Malek has shared his personal experience with racial profiling in a recent interview.
Malek's parents are Egyptian immigrants, and the actor was born in California.
In an interview with The Guardian, he recounted an incident wherein he was mistaken for a liquor store robber.
"I got thrown on the bonnet of an LAPD cop car because someone had robbed a liquor store and stolen a woman's bag," he shared. "They said the [thief] was of Latin descent and, 'You fit the description.'"
A friend of his helped him get out of the sticky situation.
"My friend, who was Caucasian, was clever enough to go, 'Actually, sir, he's Egyptian. Not Latin,'" Malek recounted.
"I remember laughing on the cop car, thinking, 'OK, this is a very precarious situation. I may well be going to jail for something I've not done,'" he added.
Elsewhere in the interview, the "Bohemian Rhapsody" actor, 43, discussed his experience of growing up as Egyptian-American.
He acknowledged that it is not quite that easy to get rid of the idea of being different.
"I don't know how you ever get over that," Malek said. "I'm what's called 'white passing', but I have very distinctive features, and we definitely didn't fit in."
He likewise shared that his family spoke Arabic at home.
"I didn't speak English until I was five or six," the actor revealed.