David Dastmalchian

David Dastmalchian was born on July 21, 1975,^[4][5] in Allentown, Pennsylvania,^[5] to Priscilla and Hossein Dastmalchian. His father was an Armenian-Iranian-American engineer who worked at engineering firm Black & Veatch.^[6][7][8] He has two sisters and a brother. His parents divorced, which he described as "tumultuous", and both remarried. He was raised in Overland Park, Kansas, where he attended Shawnee Mission South High School from which he graduated in 1994, having been part of the drama club.^[9][10] He described growing up in the Kansas City metropolitan area as "very traditional in one sense, and a conservative community that also had a rad, fringe, artistic, progressive tribe of people who were finding connectivity through the arts and the culture of KC and the surrounding suburbs."^[11]

In his childhood, Dastmalchian developed vitiligo, for which he suffered ridicule from his peers.^[12] Consequently, he experienced depression throughout his childhood. Growing up, he enjoyed football, theater, and comics. He would mow lawns, saving money to buy comics.^[2][13][14] He studied at The Theatre School at DePaul University and graduated in 1999.^{[15][16][17][18]} Prior to beginning his career as an actor, he dealt with a heroin addiction for five years. He wrote about his experiences in his screenplay, Animals,^[10] and continues to advocate for mental health and substance abuse treatment programs.^[19] Shortly after becoming sober, he worked at a seafood restaurant in Kansas City.^[13] He was also briefly a fisherman in Alaska.^[20]

Dastmalchian began his professional career in the mid-2000s in Chicago, working on stage and in commercials.^[2] He has received acclaim for lead roles in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie and Sam Shepard's Buried Child at Chicago's Shattered Globe Theatre.^[21] He was involved with a number of Chicago theater companies and was an artistic associate at Caffeine Theatre.^[22]

His feature film debut came in the late 2000s, as the Joker's deranged henchman, Thomas Schiff, in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. His portrayal of Bob Taylor in Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners^[23] received strong reviews. Richard Corliss of Time called Dastmalchian's performance "excellent – chatty, modest with some subtle telltale psychopathy" and The Guardian's Paul MacInnes likened his introduction as a new suspect to Kevin Spacey's entrance in Seven.^[24]

In March 2014, Dastmalchian was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Courage in Storytelling at the South by Southwest Film Festival. He wrote and starred in the feature film Animals, directed by Collin Schiffli. Ashley Moreno of The Austin Chronicle credits Dastmalchian's screenplay with "present[ing] an authenticity often lacking in films about drug abuse."^[25] Film Threat's Brian Tallerico similarly sings the praises of Dastmalchian's breakout performance, noting his ability to "capture that sense of self-loathing that comes through in the body language of an addict without overselling it."^[26]

Other feature film appearances include starring roles in the psychological thriller The Employer,^[27] the indie grindhouse hit Sushi Girl, the drama Cass (winner, San Diego Black Film Festival), Girls Will Be Girls 2012 (a sequel to the 2003 cult hit Girls Will Be Girls), Saving Lincoln, Virgin Alexander, Ant-Man, and Michel Franco's Chronic.

He has also appeared on television: in an eleven-episode arc as Murdoc, the nemesis of the title character in MacGyver; as Simon on the Fox sci-fi series Almost Human, in the episode "Simon Says"; as a chess expert and murder suspect on the CBS forensics procedural drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; and as Oz Turner on the BBC drama series Intruders. Other television appearances include the FX sitcom The League, the Showtime crime drama series Ray Donovan, and NBC's medical drama ER.

Dastmalchian has appeared in several DC Studios television shows; he portrayed DC Comics villain Abra Kadabra in seasons 3 and 7 of The Flash^[28] and Dwight Pollard in the second season of the TV series Gotham.

In 2017, Dastmalchian had a small role in Blade Runner 2049, also directed by Denis Villenueve. The following year, Dastmalchian once again portrayed Kurt in Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to Ant-Man.^[29] In 2021, he portrayed Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad,^[30] a character with whom he said he connected on a personal level due to the childhood bullying he suffered as a result of his vitiligo.^[12] Later that same year, he appeared in his third collaboration with Villeneuve when he portrayed Piter De Vries in Dune.^[31] In 2023, Dastmalchian starred in the horror films Late Night with the Devil and The Boogeyman, as well as The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Also in 2023, he had a minor role as William L. Borden in Christopher Nolan's biopic epic Oppenheimer.

In addition to his acting career, Dastmalchian is a comic book writer. In 2019, he debuted his Dark Horse Comics series Count Crowley, illustrated by Lukas Ketner.^[32]

Dastmalchian married artist Evelyn "Eve" Leigh^[33] in 2014. They live in Los Angeles^[34] with their two children.^[2][22][35]

• Media related to David Dastmalchian at Wikimedia Commons
• David Dastmalchian at IMDb