The 37-year-old Fayssal Bazzi is an accomplished actor, famous for his notable performances in the ABC’s six-part refugee drama Stateless and Mark Grentell’s comedy-drama The Merger. His role as ‘Sayyid’ in The Merger earned him a nomination for the 2018 AACTA Award for Best Actor in Supporting Role.
Born to a Lebanese father, Ali, and a Syrian mother in 1982, Bazzi has worked steadily in Australia for over a decade. He has avoided being typecast as Arabic characters, especially terrorists and criminals, for much of his career. He says:
“I just want to play characters whose ethnicity is incidental and I’ve been lucky to be able to do that in the past few years.”
Bazzi played Ameer in ABC’s Stateless, also aired on Netflix on 08 July this year, which depicts the real-life scandal of an Australian woman, Cornelia Rau’s unlawful detention in 2004 at the Baxter Detention Centre. Ameer is an Afghan teacher refugee fleeing the Taliban with his family – wife and two daughters.
Earlier 2019, Bazzi starred in the second season of FX/Foxtel’s Mr. Inbetween, his second collaboration with Herriman following the 2015 Cronulla race riot drama Down Under. He played Farouk in Paul Ireland’s Measure for Measure, which premiered at MIFF in 2019 and will hit the cinemas on 09 September this year.
The 6-foot-1 actor also starred in Stan’s climate-change drama, The Commons, which was initially released on 25 December 2019. He also did the voice of Mr. Todd, the fox in the animated feature film Peter Rabbit.
At the age of three and a half, Bazzi emigrated to Australia from Lebanon with his family after a rocket hit their Beirut apartment. By God’s grace, they were out at the time, and no one was injured.
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The actor started his first primary school, speaking Arabic and French, and had difficulties in learning English. As one of the few immigrants, he had tough times, experiencing racism and bullying.
However, his year two teacher encouraged and motivated him to mime to indicate what he wanted. After finding out how good he was at mimicry, the teacher suggested him to be an actor.
At the age of 15, Bazzi joined the Actors College of Theatre and Television in Sydney. After completing the three-year course, he became active on Theatres and did four or five plays a year.
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Bazzi, who celebrates his birthday on 11 November, made his TV debut in a medical drama All Saints, followed by SBS’ drama East-West 101. Fayssal has made guest appearances in TV shows like Crownies, Top of the Lake, Chosen, The Letdown, and Rake.
Bazzi has an older brother named Wassim Bazzi, who is married to wife Jennifer and has a four-year-old son.
