خالد عبدالله

Khalid Abdalla (Arabic: خالد عبد الله, romanized: Khālid ‘Abd Allāh; born 26 October 1980) is a British actor and activist. He became known after starring in the 2006 film United 93. Abdalla starred as Amir in The Kite Runner (2007) and acted with Matt Damon in Green Zone (2010), his second film with director Paul Greengrass. Abdalla appears as himself in Jehane Noujaim's documentary on the 2011 Egyptian revolution, The Square, which won the Audience Award at Sundance Festival in 2013. In 2022 and 2023, he starred as Dodi Fayed in seasons 5 and 6 of the historical drama series The Crown, for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Abdalla is on the board of the National Student Drama Festival. In 2011, he became one of the founding members of the Mosireen ("We Insist") Collective in Cairo: a group of revolutionary filmmakers and activists dedicated to supporting citizen media across Egypt in the wake of Hosni Mubarak's fall. Three months after it began, Mosireen became the most watched non-profit YouTube channel in Egypt of all time, and in the whole world in January 2012. Abdalla was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Egyptian parents, and was brought up in London. Abdalla's father and grandfather were well-known anti-regime activists in Egypt. His parents were both physicians who immigrated to the UK before he was born. Abdalla was educated at King's College School, an independent school for boys in Wimbledon in south-west London and his classmates included actor Ben Barnes and comedian Tom Basden. He became interested in acting after becoming involved in his school's thriving drama scene. In 1998, he directed a production of Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness, which ended up having a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival and earned five stars in The Scotsman newspaper, making him the youngest director to receive this accolade. After spending a gap year travelling around the Middle East, Abdalla went on to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read English. He was active in the student drama scene alongside the likes of contemporaries Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens. He was a joint winner with Cressida Trew, his future wife, of the Judges' Award for Acting at the National Student Drama Festival for his performance in Bedbound by Enda Walsh. Abdalla trained under Philippe Gaulier at École Philippe Gaulier.