Kal Naga

Khaled Abu El-Naga, also known as Kal, is an Egyptian American actor, director, and producer. He is recognized primarily for his work in Egypt and the Middle East, but has increasingly ventured into American and British film and television roles since 2006. While studying theatre at The American University in Cairo, he started acting and directing (English and Arabic language) plays and musicals in Egypt.

Beginning his professional acting career in 2000, Naga starred in several movies through the next decade with roles encompassing several genres, from musicals such as None but that! (2007), to action such as Agamista (2007) and ''Eyes Of A Thief'' (2014), to thrillers such as Kashf Hesab (2007), to art-house such as Heliopolis (2009), Villa 69 (2013), and Decor (2014), to slapstick comedy such as Habibi Naêman (Sleeping Habibi) (2008). Additionally, he has participated in several European film festivals, receiving various awards as an actor and producer.

Since 2016, he has acted in several English-speaking roles, such as Tyrant on FX, History Channel's Vikings, and the BBC's TV mini-series The Last Post, and the Netflix Show Messiah in 2019. In a film festival in 2016 that celebrated Arab film submissions to the Oscars, he was noted as having the most number of submission in Arabic films to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (The Oscars). He has been tagged in western media as "Egypt's Brad Pitt", and he has also been described as "the next Omar Sharif," especially after his American debut movie Civic Duty in 2007.

Chosen as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 2007, Naga played a pivotal role in child rights awareness, as well as the very first HIV awareness campaigns in Egypt and the Arab world, and participated in several international causes, including advocating for democracy in his home country, Egypt. He is one of the most recognizable celebrity faces of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, taking part in mass demonstrations in Cairo that led to the removal of President Mubarak. He faced defamation campaigns against him by the state-owned media during the Mubarak era before the January 25th, 2011 revolution in Egypt, and several times again from the 2013 "coup d'etat" General Sisi government in Egypt in retaliation for his advocacy about the deterioration of human rights, especially the situation of Egyptian youth.

He was also a host for prime-time shows on many Arab TV networks from 1997 until 2005.