Fares Fares

Fares Fares (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈfǎːrɛs ˈfǎːrɛs] ; born 29 April 1973) is a Swedish actor, producer, and director. He is known for his collaborations with director Tarik Saleh, as well as his roles in notable shows such as Chernobyl and The Wheel of Time. Fares has received various accolades, including a Guldbagge Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and two Robert Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Fares was born on 29 April 1973 in Beirut, Lebanon to a family of Assyrian origin. His younger brother is director Josef Fares, and he has four sisters. In 1987, when Fares was 14 years old, his family moved to Sweden, residing in Örebro. They moved to escape the Lebanese Civil War and chose Sweden because they had relatives who had already lived there. Fares says he learned Swedish within three months of living in Sweden. From the age of 15, Fares acted in a local theater group in Örebro. When he was 19, he attended drama school in Mölnlycke near Gothenburg, Sweden. He spent six years working in the Theatre Tamauer. Fares has played major parts in films directed by his brother, Josef Fares. He debuted in Jalla! Jalla! (2000) and Kopps (2003). He starred in Bang Bang Orangutang (2005) and Kill Your Darlings (2006). In 2010, Fares starred in the Swedish crime thriller Easy Money with Joel Kinnaman. The film was critically acclaimed and was picked up for American distribution by Harvey Weinstein. In 2012, Fares made his Hollywood debut in the Denzel Washington movie Safe House. He played American CIA officer Hakim in Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Fares had a role in Child 44 (2014) with Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman. Fares played Senator Vaspar in the Star Wars franchise movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). For The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013), which was set in Denmark, Fares learned to speak Danish in two months. This film was the first of ten features based on Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q novels. Fares and Nikolaj Lie Kaas appeared in the first four of these films, produced by Zentropa. Their roles were later recast when the film rights were sold to Nordisk Film. Fares is partially known for his long-standing collaborative relationship with director Tarik Saleh, most famously starring in his Cairo trilogy, consisting of The Nile Hilton Incident (2017), Boy from Heaven (2022), and Eagles of the Republic (2025).