Early in David Dastmalchian’s screen career, one Chicago casting director saw two possibilities for him: a cab driver or a terrorist.
The American actor, whose father was Iranian, had been playing a much wider range of characters on stage to that point, but the auditions coming his way offered little opportunity to do the same on camera.
“I remember in the beginning of my career being told, ‘You’re gonna have to change your last name,’” Dastmalchian tells The National.
But despite needing the work, he resisted racial typecasting again and again.
“I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to go after every role that I could possibly swing for,” he continues.
Nearly two decades after his film debut, Dastmalchian has become one of Hollywood's most versatile performers. In his latest starring role, he plays M Bison in director Kitao Sakurai’s new Street Fighter adaptation. The villain joins a career spanning superhero films, science fiction and horror, all under the surname he was advised to change.
Set in 1993, the film follows estranged fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo), who are recruited by Chun-Li (Callina Liang) for the World Warrior Tournament. Behind the competition is a conspiracy that draws them back into conflict.
Dastmalchian's route into that career began with director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, released in 2008, in which he played one of the Joker’s accomplices. Casting director John Papsidera brought him in to audition for what would become his film debut.
“And thank God for John Papsidera, who came into Chicago and he was casting a movie, and he was willing to see everybody,” Dastmalchian says. “And he saw me as something that other people hadn’t given me a chance to do on camera.
“On the stage I always felt like I had an opportunity to swing for the fences with all different types of roles.”
Even appearing in one of the biggest films of the decade did not guarantee steady work. In an interview with Backstage, Dastmalchian recalled arriving in Los Angeles without an agent or manager. Despite having The Dark Knight on his CV, he was turned down by the small agencies and management companies he approached.
“It was devastatingly humbling to continue to be told, ‘No, we don’t want to work with you,’” he said.
He continued auditioning for short films and music videos and attending casting workshops. Few of those auditions produced jobs, but they introduced him to people and helped him build the professional relationships on which his career would come to depend.
Nolan later cast him again in Oppenheimer, while director Denis Villeneuve championed his work in the meantime, casting him in Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune. Dastmalchian also took a leading role in the Abu Dhabi-produced runaway hit Late Night with the Devil, playing Jack Delroy, a television host whose Halloween broadcast spirals out of control.
“I swim in such a giant pool of gratitude, honestly, because it was the people who were willing to see me and see the potential for what’s the human underneath, right?” he says. “That’s the story that you’re always trying to tell.”
The actor recognises that nationality and ancestry can be central to how a character is written and performed. His objection, however, is to those factors limiting the roles an actor is allowed to pursue. Having found people willing to give him that freedom, he wants others to have the same opportunities.
“I want everybody out there who’s an actor that feels like they want a chance to embrace the art, no matter what they look like, where they’re from, where their parents are from, what language they were raised speaking, to know that all the things we’re dealing with in acting are universal.”
Street Fighter is in cinemas now across the Middle East