Why The Actor Who Plays Freddie Mercury Looks So Familiar

Bohemian Rhapsody, a film about the incredible rise of '70s rock icons Queen, finally hits theaters in November 2018. It's been a long time coming with lots of planning and false starts —  it almost went in front of cameras years ago starring comedian and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen as Queen's singer, the late Freddie Mercury. But the ship righted itself, and starring in the tale of the band behind songs like "We Are the Champions," "Under Pressure," and, of course, "Bohemian Rhapsody," is actor Rami Malek. 

Who's that? Well, he's arguably not as famous as Cohen, but he's certainly an accomplished talent who's made an impression over the last decade as one of Hollywood's most intriguing young actors. His biggest role, and the one that got him on the radar to play the great Mercury, is Elliot Alderson, a talented hacker with a very complicated inner life on USA's hit drama Mr. Robot. Here are some other places where you might have seen Rami Malek — and all the biggest reasons why the actor who plays Freddie Mercury looks so familiar.

While not as culturally or commercially significant as its animated offerings like The Simpsons and American Dad, Fox still airs the occasional live-action, laugh-track-powered situation comedy. From 2005 to 2007 it broadcast the moderately successful The War at Home. A vehicle for brash but likable actor Michael Rapaport, it centered on the Golds, one of those sitcom families that's always bickering while dad (Rapaport) can't understand how the world has changed so much since he was a kid. The War at Home thusly addressed social issues, particularly through its teenage characters. Larry Gold (Kyle Sullivan) spent most of his time hanging out with his best friend Khaleel Nazeeh Al-Nahir, a Middle Eastern-American who prefers to be called Kenny. Because Larry likes things like figure skating and is very close with his male friend, Rapaport's character assumes the boys are in love, but in truth Larry isn't gay, but Kenny is (and he harbors a secret crush on Larry). A major recurring figure on The War at Home, Malek appeared in 21 episodes of the series.

Before his Emmy-winning, star-making work on Mr. Robot, Rami Malek's big TV breakthrough was a major role in HBO's acclaimed 2010 Emmy-winning miniseries The Pacific. A stylistically and philosophically similar follow-up to the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (it was produced by the same people), it examined the lives of soldiers fighting in Europe during World War II, and followed American Marines fighting in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Not only is the story obviously based on real events, but so are characters like Malek's Pfc./Cpl. Merriel Shelton, a.k.a. Snafu, a Louisiana-born private who's at first tough on his fellow soldiers and brutal to the enemy, then comes to realize the toll war can have on humanity and decency. In a roundtable discussion in 2016, Malek credited the role with preparing him to play more complex people — such as Elliot on Mr. Robot — but without internalizing the emotional baggage of the character.

The four-film Twilight series offered many up-and-coming actors their big breaks. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson became well-known stars, Taylor Lautner was briefly a Taylor Swift-dating teen idol, and Anna Kendrick and Dakota Fanning were among those who got a nice visibility boost from playing vampires, humans loved by vampires, or evil vampires. Rami Malek got some attention, too. In Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the fourth and final movie in the Twilight "saga," Malek portrayed a 200-year-old vampire named Benjamin, a member of the mysterious and illustrious Egyptian coven that the central Cullen family summons to help in their war against the Volturi (a coalition of bad vampires). Despite the creepy red eyes (it's a vampire thing), he's a kind and tender vampire with the superpower to alter the elements. Benjamin promises to help out however he can after he meets Renesme, the half-human / half-vampire baby born of main characters Bella and Edward.

Rami Malek emerged from the young Hollywood pack for good in 2015 when he landed the lead role of Elliot Anderson on Mr. Robot. The ambitious, mysterious, and unpredictable USA series concerns the exploits of Elliot (Malek), a genius hacker and part of a collective of like-minded individuals called f society, bent on bringing the world to its knees by destroying its banking systems and as well as the evil and all powerful E Corp. The main issue with Elliot (which plays with the narrative structure of the series) is that he has a split personality disorder and also can't quite always remember what he did or what happened, or what is or is not reality. It's an extremely complicated role, and it's one that not only made Malek a star, but one that earned him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Dramatic Series in 2016.

Rami Malek is a talented, versatile actor, and he can convey a lot of details about characters using only his voice. Part of what makes Mr. Robot so intriguing is Malek's in-character narration as the troubled Elliot Alderson (often presented in the second person, as in he addresses an unknown and unseen "you"). Malek has been honing his voice acting skills over his entire decade-and-a-half career. One of his first acting jobs was recording dialogue for a variety of minor characters in the classic video game Halo 2. He also had a run on Nickelodeon's beloved fantasy series The Legend of Korra as Tahno, a role he reprised in a video game adaptation of the show. Additionally, Malek's distinctive voice has popped up in other video games, such as Until Dawn, and in TV animation. Notably, Malek's BoJack Horseman character Flip McVicker, a shy and quirky filmmaker, enjoyed a major plot arc in the fourth and fifth season of the Netflix cartoon sad-com.