British Actors You Should Know: Adeel Akhtar

If Adeel Akhtar had deferred to paternal pressure, he might have followed in his father's footsteps and become an immigration lawyer. The London-born son of Pakistani and Kenyan immigrants did, in fact, study law. But fortunately for us, his mother enrolled him in National Youth Theatre classes on the sly, and his love of acting never left him. Akhtar eventually set the law career aside and opted to take up acting instead.

In 2002, while traveling to New York to audition at the famous Actor's Studio, Akhtar was erroneously identified as a terrorist, which resulted in his arrest and detainment at JFK. This may be why, for the most part, the actor has avoided being typecast in such roles, aside from his first screen credit in the TV movie, Let's Roll: The Story of Flight 93. The first non-white actor to win the Best Leading Actor in a TV Series BAFTA award, Akhtar's first big break had him playing a terrorist of a different sort.

Four Lions

Four Lions was one of the few comedies to take a punch at Islamic terrorism without resorting to debasing racist caricatures. The 2010 BAFTA-winning satirical farce follows a group of homegrown Jihadists from Yorkshire who dream of the glory of martyrdom. Luckily for the innocent citizens of England, it turns out they're an inept and quarrelsome cadre of terrorists. Akhtar plays Faisal, a trusting, dimwitted soul who thinks he can train crows to be suicide bombers.