Makram Khoury

Makram Khoury — Biography

Makram Khoury was born on 30 May 1945 in Jerusalem's al-Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood to a Christian Palestinian family, his father a magistrate and his mother a teacher. After the 1948 war the family fled to Lebanon before returning to Acre ahead of the border closing, later settling in the Galilee village of Kufr Yasif; he entered the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1963 but left to pursue acting, training instead at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London.

He performed at Tel Aviv's Cameri Theater and spent twenty years with the Haifa Municipal Theater, at one point touring internationally in Peter Brook's production of 11 and 12 as Tierno Bokar, before moving into Hebrew- and Arabic-language film and television work by the late 1970s. In 1987 he became the youngest performer and the first Arab to receive the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian honour, and in 2013, on his eighth nomination, won the Ophir Award for Magic Men.

His screen credits include playing Tariq Aziz in House of Saddam and roles in Munich, Free Zone, The Syrian Bride and Wedding in Galilee. Both his daughter Clara and his son Jameel have followed him into acting; Jameel appeared in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies.