Art Malik
- Born
- November 13, 1952 (age 68)
- Profession
- Actor, Film Producer
- Spouse
- Gina Rowe
- Parents
- Mazhar Ul-Haque Malik, Zaibunisa Ul-Haque Malik
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.
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Malik was born Athar Ul-Haque Malik in Bahawalpur, West Punjab, Pakistan, the son of Zaibunisa and Mazhar Ul-Haque Malik, a physician who would soon qualify as an ophthalmic surgeon in Britain. Malik was thus brought to London in 1956 with his four older brothers. At age 10 he was sent to school in Quetta, Balochistan for one year, and then Bec Grammar School, a selective state school in Upper Tooting, London.
Malik is mildly dyslexic and found academic studies trying; after an unsatisfactory stint of business studies and a term studying acting at the Questors Theatre, he won a scholarship to Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before long, he was working with the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies, where he played the title role in the Shakespeare play Othello.
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 A Passage to India; the two high profile and successful productions assuring his professional future. He also appeared in a television serialisation of M.M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. All three were released in 1984. In 1986 he played in the film The Harem with Omar Sharif and Nancy Travis.
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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.