From a teenage boy’s harrowing fleet from a war torn Lebanon, to sleeping on a park bench in California; to the high school student who took a chance on his passion — the past of Said Faraj (Sy-eed Fair-ahge) has run the proverbial gamut of the modern human experience. Now playing opposite Matt Damon in “Green Zone,” a very busy Said has taken time to sit down and talk to me about his “God sent gifts,” and desire to spread love.
Before actor Said Faraj took to the silver screen playing opposite of Matt Damon in the March 2010 film, “Green Zone,” there was a Said who lead a less conspicuous life. There was a Said of only 9-years-old who witnessed the deaths of close friends and family, including his 8-year-old brother when civil war took hold of Lebanon. And the teenage and quarterlife Said who escaped bombs and bullets to flee his beloved country to seek safe haven in America, and find a passion in entertainment.
When I spoke with Said, he began by telling me of how his parents worried over him after losing his younger brother. Said told me his family began to set into motion the steps needed to save him from an early death and the journey to remove himself from harms way; which ironically turned out to be a journey even more dangerous as the war itself.
To begin the process, Said needed to receive what was considered an almost impossible military grant to leave the embattled Lebanon. However, through an auspicious family connection a “favor” was granted by a military General who allowed Said to leave Lebanon for “10 days.” Said stated candidly that although he obtained this pass through a family connection, this particular General was known for liberally bestowing multiple day passes to move individuals out of Lebanon. With a mixed-emotional voice of joy and sadness, Said spoke about receiving his pass from the General just in time, as within a few days of being granted permission to leave, the General who helped Said was executed for his misuse of his power.
Said recalled how lucky he felt, but how this particular bittersweet circumstance was merely the foreshadowing of many dark situations he encountered while attempting to leaving Lebanon.
Relieved to have his pass, Said wasted no time to head to to the United States Embassy in Beirut with his father on April 18, 1983 to file for his visa to enter America. Said patiently waited at the embassy from about 3am on April 18, until early afternoon the same day for “a blessing” which nearly cost him his life. The visa was “a blessing” because Said was the last person to receive a visa from the US embassy on April 18, 1983, as Said was no more than 100ft (30m) walking distance from the embassy when a suicide-bomber exploded his car at the embassy, killing 63 people. (If you’re not familiar with recent history, you can read details of that day here)
Literally escaping with his life from the embassy bombing, Said repeatedly called his visa a “blessing from God,” and puts this experience above all, as you could hear the resonance of fear still within as he recalled this story with greater detail among all the others of his journey.
There were a few months in between Said receiving his “blessing,” and his departure date for America. However, with all the trips Said had made to government buildings and military officials, he had left a “paper trail” of passes and embassy visits which was just enough for ill-hearted individuals to notice him; and unfortunately, Said’s plan was found out.
Over the months leading up to his October departure, unbeknownst to Said and his father, these ill-hearted individuals were setting out to capture Said and his family in his attempt to leave Lebanon.
Early one October morning, with the combination of an early flight and Said’s father knowledge of snipers on the route to the airport, Said and his family were on an predawn dash to the airport, much earlier than anyone had anticipated. So early, they left literally minutes before his would-be captures entered his hotel room, with a furious intent, that same morning.
Unaware of the capture they inadvertently escaped, an en route to the airport, as Said retold the near cinematic encounter he and his father endured after just missing the captures at the hotel, they fell victim to the sniper fire they tried to avoid.
The bullets came down from the hillsides, upon Said and his father’s car, who were on the one road many trying to flee Lebanon via the airport took. Said recalled the moments in the car as bullets flew past him, pinging off the car’s fender, that it all seemed like, “something from a movie.”
With the “hand of God” protecting him, Said and his father made it to the airport, with rattled nerves yet untouched, they emerged from the car and rushed to his terminal, where he was finally bound for New York City.
As Said stood amongst the rest of the passengers in the Lebanese airport, he noticed something more pronounced than the bullets he had just experienced, he was the only male over 10 in the entire airport.
Starkly contrasted amongst children and women, Said was a lone male his age boarding a flight, and he was not missed by the scrutiny of the airport staff checking passports. Before he boarded his flight Said recalled, with agitation in his voice, how he was let into an hour interrogation which annoyingly analyzed the minutiae of his life…tirelessly trying to find inaccuracies in his story and disloyalty to his country.
Since Said had obtain military approval, US Visa and proved his patriotism in his native language, he was free to take his flight; and on October 17, 1983, a day that Said will never forget as “freezing,” he landed, unceremoniously, in New York City.
When he landed, he underwent a customs interrogation in America. Said couldn’t really expound on this experience stating, “My English was so bad back then, that till this day I have no idea as to what I told them!”
After his interrogation in New York, customs put him on a flight to a relative in North Hollywood, California, only giving him 10 days to stay in the country; and he needed every minute to make his stay in America permanent.
What should have been a simple plane flight, phone call and pick-up for the 16-year-old Said headed to California, turned into an almost 2-week ordeal of sleeping on a park bench and eating one hamburger a day. To completely understand how this happened, you have to have a deeper knowledge of Said’s thought process.
In Lebanon, there were only so many people with certain surnames in the country, and those names are specific to a certain cities, and certain parts of town. With this interconnected and tight-knit community in Lebanon, if you were to show up and ask a stranger for someone with the surname “Smith,” someone would point you in the direction where they lived.
With this mentality, Said landed in LA and knew his uncle lived in North Hollywood. So he got in a cab and asked for his uncle by last name in North Hollywood. Naturally, in the classic cab driver fashion, the driver dropped him off in the middle of North Hollywood, and told him, “that not really the way it works here…”
With no way to contact anyone, poor English and no where to go; Said saw was a park bench and a hamburger stand.
So for almost two weeks, at the age of 16, slept on a park bench and ate one hamburger a day (except on Saturdays, he had two, because they were closed on Sundays) and tried day-in and day-out to find his uncle. Running out of money and time, he began asking around and eventually ran into a ESOL school and a Lebanese employee. They exchanged stories, and midway through their conversation Said realized that if they were both back in Lebanon, they would not be speaking to one another, as the ESOL teacher would have been on the “enemy side” firing from the hillside on Said and his father’s car.
However, this was America, and the “enemy” was able to help Said in his quest to find his uncle in North Hollywood; and as Said says, “to get to the best part, it turns out my uncle was only 2 blocks away from the park bench!”
Understanding Said’s journey makes understanding Said’s unbreakable passion to pursue acting in his quarterlife very easy. However, before we began to speak about how he got into his career in Hollywood, he backtracked to talk about the war, outside of the bullets, bombs and interrogations. He described the atmosphere of Lebanon during the war as, “warm,” with so much love and camaraderie between neighbors and families during war. He said families and communities became closer when they were huddled into homes together and moving about to gather supplies. But what Said thinks is best is how after the war. when dispersed family members came back to Lebanon, they had a chance to shared their worldly experiences from all around the globe, and this has helped Lebanon, in his view to become a better country.
Said particularly spoke of the main aspect which brought people together, it was entertainment. He said, “people were truly one,” most notably, during Soccer games. Said states, “Soccer was what really brought everyone together, and was the only time when everyone just stopped shooting, and everybody watched the game.”
But more close to Said was the theater.
When I asked Said about his interest in acting, and if he had not fled Lebanon would he still be an actor, he told me how deep his passion and interests for acting went.
Despite starting life in war time, where it was difficult to look to the future as you only “lived to survive.” However, Said enjoyed the escape of the theater and the sense of euphoria he captured when seeing movies (Starting with “Tarzan” being the 1st movie he ever saw) and with a great national appreciation for classical theater, he knew he was meant to be on stage and film.
By the time Said was entering the “quarterlife”, he had a bigger crisis than most. Fleeing his home land, flying to America and now graduated from North Hollywood High, Said began a few odd jobs, but knew he wasn’t truly enthralled with the idea of “working.”
He always loved acting and wanting pursue acting.
At this time in his early 20′s, Said remembered his favorite teacher Ms. Haber, who told him — “If you are passionate about something, why don’t you just go out and make it happen.” When he went back to visit her, she recommended an acting agency for him, gave him a card, with which Said jumped right in without doing any research or asking any questions. He set up an appointment, and lacking any experience, he was cast in extra roles, and began to do some minor work alongside actors like Gene Hackman.
Enjoying his growing experiences and his drive for “just wanting to be in FRONT of the camera,” his persistence gave him opportunity to learn some tricks of the trade and shortly after found a new manager who had him auditioning like a fiend.
I asked him if he ever wanted to give up, and he said without hesitation “No — I just enjoy being here, and even the thought of getting the “small roles,” I would just get so excited!” He continued, “I never thought of them as small roles, but saw it as a challenge and accomplishment.”
Said knows that God allowed him to have the focus he needed to stay true to his passion, and give him the focus and positive mentality to get him where he is today.
Today, though out of his quarterlife, Said still carries the war torn childhood memories and the years of minor “Cabbie and Clerk” roles, typical for Arab actors, and has made a productive career for himself. Though Said is working along side Matt Damon, flying across the country to movie premiers and meeting heads-of-state, Said still does have his role models. Said looks to actors like Tony Shalhoub, who as another Lebanese-American, as a great artistic role model for Said, as well as for Said’s young children.
While on the subject of Arab actors, I asked Said how he felt the portrayal of his characters in previous movies, and if those roles were helping the stereotype of Arab-Americans, and additionally if he had noticed an overall sentiment change towards Arabs in Hollywood.
Said had to pause, and explained how although it was empowering to have some representation on screen as an Arab in America, he said the common portrayal of a Middle Eastern characters such as, clerks, terrorists or minor roles of that nature can limit artists in their career.
He said, “It has certainly become more of a stereotype for us Arab artists to play those roles. If you’re not taking your acting seriously, you can take whatever they give you you just to be on screen. However, when you go to acting class, read books and study the artistic nuances and theories, you feel almost incapable of playing those roles, because they put you in a box, and limit you your artistic creativity.”
Said added “…if you want to establish yourself as a credible actor, you have to get out of that box and use film and independent film to give you the chance to do more creative and even “normal” roles.”
Creative and “normal” is what Said Faraj had the chance to portray in Green Zone. Playing a high ranking military father, Said was able to be someone normal and not the “Cabbie and Clerk” as he had been previously.
Consistently reiterating his great appreciation for the “Green Zone” team for providing him the opportunity to help popularize the portrayal of Arabs in Hollywood, Said wants to thank Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for being great supporters.
Of course, he thanks God for the blessings of allowing to even be alive to experience this, and for protecting him and his family over the years to allow this dream to come to fruition.
Though this is not the typical story of “Rags to Riches,” Said’s life has holds the story of an unsung potential behind a passion too many would have ignored. Despite facing the perils of war, Said beat incredible odds to make it where he is today, and every time we speak, he continues to thank God, each time sounding more and more surprised by the things that are happening around him.
Said Wants to Thank:
Acting Coach: Candy Kaniecki
Director: Paul Greengrass
Co-Star: Matt Damon
Be sure to watch “Green Zone”!