Like any unknown actor looking for his big break, Khalid Abdalla was eager to be cast in a movie, especially a studio production. Yet when the 25-year-old performer heard about a possible lead part in an upcoming Universal Studios film, Abdalla considered turning it down.
The hesitation was understandable: The acting job was playing Ziad Jarrah, the hijacker at the controls of the Sept. 11 jetliner that crashed into a Pennsylvania field, killing all 40 passengers and crew on board, in "United 93."
As filmmakers tell a number of stories about Sept. 11 and other attacks both real and fictionalized -- a rapidly growing list that includes "Munich," "Syriana," "Paradise Now" and Friday's "United 93" -- there's increased demand for young Middle Eastern actors. But directors and their casting agents must convince those actors that their cinematic cause is more noble than that of directors a generation ago, who routinely depicted Arabs as cartoonish, fanatical madmen.
The actors who play terrorists, suicide bombers and hijackers in this new crop of films are caught in a delicate predicament: The very things they find attractive in playing these parts -- three-dimensional characters, understandable motivations, the occasional love interest -- also open up their films to criticism for humanizing individuals that some consider monsters.
"My first reaction on even hearing about the part was that I have no interest in doing anything like that at all for a number of reasons," Abdalla said about acting in "United 93."
Abdalla wasn't the only actor who had reservations about playing that particular terrorist.
When 28-year-old French actor Karim Saleh learned of auditions for "The Hamburg Cell," a 2004 British television movie about the formation of the Sept. 11 hijacking team, he held similar misgivings about playing Jarrah. Only with his dad accompanying him for moral support on the trip to the London audition did Saleh drum up the resolve to read for the starring role.
"My father gave me the strength to believe that I would not be stuck playing terrorists," Saleh said. "He said, 'There's a lot more to you.' "
When writer-director Stephen Gaghan was casting "Syriana," his ensemble drama about the political and personal costs of America's dependence on foreign oil, he struggled to find a young actor of Pakistani descent to play a suicide bomber. He held casting sessions in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Damascus, Bahrain, Dubai and Karachi without success before he finally found Mazhar Munir in London.
