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Nadim Joakim Sawalha was born in Madaba, Jordan, one of two brothers (the other is comedian Nabil Sawalha) to a family of Christian Bedouins. He studied at an English school, where he first developed an interest in acting. Arriving in London in the early 50s, Sawalha attended drama classes, but, for several years, was unable to find suitable employment due to lack of a work permit. He was eventually hired by the BBC Arabic Service, obtained his work permit and worked his way up the ladder to drama producer. After five years, he resigned his position to take up stage acting, later explaining "I was aspiring to learn the craft of an actor, not just aiming for film." In due course, Sawalha became one of the first actors of Arabic background to work with the RSC, the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre in London.
On screen, he has been typecast as Middle Easterners, often in serial television: Sexton Blake (1967), The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971), The Sweeney (1975), The Professionals (1977), Murphy's Law (2003), among many others. When not playing Arabs, he portrayed Indians, saying "In the 1960s and 1970s the industry was doing very little on the Middle East. There were a lot of Indian roles though, so I went and taught myself how to speak with a South Asian accent. People started to think I actually was Indian!"
Sawalha received his first motion picture assignment in A Touch of Class (1973), courtesy of writer/director Melvin Frank, who gave him the part after a Greek actor, originally earmarked for the role, had walked out. This opened the door for subsequent appearances in popular films like The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and Pascali's Island (1988). Sawalha also featured in two James Bond capers: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (as the unfortunate Egyptian arms dealer Aziz Fekkesh) and The Living Daylights (1987) (as Tangier Chief of Security). He has portrayed the billionaire businessman Mohammed Al-Fayed in the TV movies Justice in Wonderland (2000) and Diana: Last Days of a Princess (2007), as well as King Hussein of Jordan in the docu-drama miniseries House of Saddam (2008).
Sawalha has retained close ties to his homeland and visits Jordan frequently to reconnect with relatives and friends. In 2007, he starred on the big screen as a simple airport janitor, who, after discovering a Royal Jordanian captain's hat in the trash, poses as an airline pilot in Captain Abu Raed (2007). The first motion picture produced in Jordan in half a century, it won several awards, including two for Sawalha as Best Actor, at the Newport and Dubai Film Festivals.
Nadim Sawalha has three daughters from his 1961 marriage to Roberta Mary Lane: Dina Sawalha and actresses Julia Sawalha and Nadia Sawalha.
