Sayed Badreya Is a Man of the People

Although his latest role sees the Egyptian actor playing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, his career has always been about representing his people

by Mallory Potosky | Published October 16, 2008

There’s so much more to Sayed Badreya than what appears on the surface. Born in Port Said, Egypt, the actor took a rather circuitous route to his current position in Hollywood as the go-to man for terrorist and doctor roles. “The most difficult time in my life when I was a little boy was the war,” Badreya explains of his beginnings. “I used to go and hide in the movie theater and be in love with American movies and America itself.” The plan was for Badreya to go to college, but after his father’s passing he was expected to work to help his mother support the family. It was while he was serving the country’s required military service that the future actor heard he was accepted to college in the United States. “So the deal was, ‘Okay, let me go to America for five years to study,’ because this was my dream.” He spent his first few years at the University of Massachusetts in Boston before studying film production at New York University. “The problem is, everyone in the class was using me as an actor. So I became really good at it,” Badreya says.

Five years turned into a few decades and by 2008 Badreya had carved himself a niche in the American movie landscape as Hezbollah Head Gunman (The Insider), Terrorist (in his own T for Terrorist) and Assisting Surgeon (Stuck on You). The stereotypical roles didn’t exactly ask him to challenge conventions but Badreya understands the system. “The stereotype is part of Egyptian film also,” he says. “If you look at Egyptian cinema they have a Black stereotype, a stereotype for foreigners and Jews. It’s everywhere.”

To counteract the prejudicial ideas prevalent both in the United States and abroad, Badreya co-wrote AmericanEast with director Hesham Issawi. “It’s a movie about your grandfather who came here in the beginning of time. It’s an Americana movie,” he says. “That was the most important thing—to put ourselves as Arab Americans in Americana, as an immigrant who came here as part of a community, like your grandfather—everybody’s grandfather.” The movie, which also stars Tony Shalhoub (“Monk”) as a Jewish immigrant, made its way around the festival circuit in the years since completion and the response was exactly what Badreya hoped for. “After the movie people were crying because they said, ‘My grandfather came from Germany and opened a restaurant and struggled. Now I’m watching him again in an Arabic skin.’

“When I came to America people were speaking Arabic as gibberish. Now people know the difference. We’ve changed a lot. We’ve become like the old movies. The good Arab is the one with the hero and the bad Arab is the one with the bad guy. But we have to take responsibility. African-Americans changed cinema after Spike Lee and I want to do that. So, I write and I produce and I try to direct, to change not only the image but to make a connection between Arab and the West and America. Because I sit here and I watch Fox TV and they’re talking about Arabs, and that’s not my Arab.”

For now, Badreya is preparing for reaction to his role as Saddam Hussein in Oliver Stone’s anticipated drama W. According to the actor, his resemblance to the dictator is uncanny. But it takes more than makeup to make a character, doesn’t it? “I studied Saddam,” he says. “Because I’m not only doing it for the American people, I’m doing it for the Arabic people.”

In a recent conversation with MM, Badreya revealed even more of his history, his projects and his responsibilities as an Arab actor.

Mallory Potosky (MM): You have directed one feature, right? A documentary?

Sayed Badreya (SB): Yeah, I directed a documentary called Saving Egyptian Film Classics. I grew up loving Egyptian cinema and got connected with the preservation. I studied preservation and I said, ‘Wow, Egyptians should have that.’ So I made a movie about it and the Egyptian government didn’t like it.

MM: Do you know the reason they didn’t like it?

SB: Yeah. They don’t want to preserve anything. They have a big, big amount of cinema. I brought them two films to be preserved for Egyptian cinema. They said, “We don’t want to preserve the two films. Then the public will ask us to preserve everything.”

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