Art Malik (born Athar ul-Haque Malik, 13 November 1952) is a Pakistani-born British actor who achieved international fame in the 1980s through his starring and subsidiary roles in assorted British and Merchant-Ivory television serials and films. He is especially remembered as the doomed Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown at the outset of his career.

Biography

By Malik's own account, the sudden success he enjoyed in 1984 resulted in excessive drinking and womanising: "I was surrounded by people who admired me and I took all of that home with me," he said when interviewed in 2003; "I paid lots of attention to my ego, and not enough to my spirit. It was totally unhealthy, like an illness." The result was a strain on his marriage, leading to his wife walking out on him less than ten years later. He also ran up high bills on his credit card, and by 1993 he owed £55,000 to the bank and £32,000 to the Inland Revenue, and was on the verge of being declared bankrupt when he landed the lucrative part of a terrorist in James Cameron's True Lies.

Malik took a major role in fundraising for relief work for victims of the Gujarat earthquake in 2001, and also appeared on the DEC Pakistan Floods Appeal advertisement in 2010. He lives with his wife Gina Rowe, a fellow student at the Guildhall, and whom he married in 1980. They have two daughters, Jessica and Keira. Although from a Muslim background, and having insisted that his character on Holby City should be a Muslim, Malik describes himself as "not a practising Muslim. I'm probably an apostate, and liable for any right-minded Muslim fundamentalist to put me on a list of people to stamp out."

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