Sami Karim

Sami Karim is a British Yemeni actor who was born in Aden, Yemen, and first encountered drama at Lampton Secondary School in Hounslow. A mathematics graduate from the University of East Anglia, he learned on set rather than at a conventional drama school. He credits Tim Kent and Eva Pope with spotting his talent and encouraging him to train, which led him to study the Meisner Technique with Eva Pope and Bryan Oliver at the Actors Gateway in London. Fluent in English, Arabic, Polish and Hindi, he broke into the Polish film and TV industry, with credits including the Netflix series Ultraviolet, the HBO series Wataha and Patryk Vega's Netflix film Kobiety Mafii 2. He played Omar Bayoumi in the Emmy-nominated Hulu series The Looming Tower, which won a Satellite Award for Best Miniseries. His films include Blackbird (2022), Legacy of Lies (2020) and The Lady of Heaven (2021), in which he portrayed Khalid ibn al-Walid.