Omid Djalili

Omid Djalili is a British standup comedian actor television producer and writer Djalili was born on 30 September 1965 in St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington London to Iranian Baháʼí parents Ahmad and Parvaneh Djalili His parents emigrated from Tehran to London in 1958 He has a brother and sister His mother was a dressmaker who at one point assisted Iranian singer Googoosh His father was a liaison officer at the Iranian embassy in which he would provide medical assistance He was also a photographer whose pictures ended up in the newspaper Kayhan He attended Holland Park School where he failed Alevel exams a record six times and faked his results to gain entry to Ulster University in Coleraine Northern Ireland studying English and theatre studies having been turned down by 16 drama schools Djalili cited Jack Lemmon Dustin Hoffman Meryl Streep Robert De Niro Christopher Walken and Julia Roberts as influences The first significant success of his standup comedy career was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1995 with Short Fat Kebab Shop Owners Son followed by The Arab and the Jew with Jewish comedian Ivor Dembina in 1996 Djalili has appeared in a number of films most notably Gladiator The Mummy Mean Machine The World Is Not Enough Alien Autopsy Spy Game Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Grow Your Own Notting Hill Mr Nice Pirates of the Caribbean At Worlds End Sex and the City 2 and provides his voice in Over the Hedge He has observed that he usually appears as a generic Middle Eastern background character in many of these films often commenting that he appears in the James Bond film as the Second Azerbaijani oil pipe attendant He appeared as Nasim in 22 episodes of the US sitcom Whoopi starring Whoopi Goldberg and picked up an international film award for Best Supporting Actor in Casanova starring alongside Heath Ledger and Jeremy Irons Djalili has won awards for his comedy These include the EMMA Award Time Out Award and LWT Comedy Award for Best Standup Comedian Spirit of the Fringe Award as well as the One World Media Award for his Channel 4 documentary Bloody Foreigners He has also been nominated for awards such as the Perrier Award for Best Comedian the Gemini Award for Best Comedy Performance of 2003 the South Bank Award for Best Comedy of 2003 the Royal Television Society Award for Best Standup and the European TV Award for his Bloody Foreigners