Syrian actor and filmmaker Ghassan Massoud is best known to western audiences for portraying military general Saladin in Ridley Scott’s 2005 film ‘Kingdom of Heaven’.
A number of offers from Hollywood followed, including a part in the 2005 thriller Syriana, but most of them called for the actor to either play an evil Arab sheikh or a Muslim terrorist. Massoud turned them down, saying the roles were inconsistent with his character and that they asked him to betray his country and homeland.
An outspoken critic of the US invasion of Iraq, he has also accused the US media of fuelling prejudice against his home country and creating an image of Syrians as “a terrorist people”.
“This is my culture and you cannot make dialogue without respect between communities,” he told British journalist Robert Fisk in an interview.
Masoud lives in Damascus with his wife, and two children.
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