Anglo-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili is setting his sights on success across the Atlantic.

He's already a hugely successful stand-up whose recent show 'Behind Enemy Lines' earned him a nomination for the prestigious Perrier Award at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

He's an actor who is getting the kind of 'ethnic' cameo roles that used to be reserved for Alexei Sayle. He's a sincere social observer whose documentary on asylum seekers for Channel 4 won awards. His star has ascended to such an extent that Kelsey 'Frasier' Grammer recently flew in especially to meet him on the set of his latest movie. Omid Djalili seems to be known everywhere these days.

Djalili so impressed TV executives at the Montreal comedy festival earlier this year that the latest project to land on his south-west London doorstep is a pilot for a new sitcom for American television.

NBC executive Marc Hirschfeld has called Djalili “the best comic that you don't know. He is a character actor who is like a bigger-than-life John Goodman, a big lovable guy.”

Grammer has been mooted as a possible producer for the show and the writers of Friends and the Larry Sanders Show are also waiting in the wings.

But this is one project Djalili wants to have a crack at himself. He and his British wife, writer Annabel Knight, are a creative team whose ability to find humour in the clash of western and eastern cultures—and they should know—has already got them this far.

Born into an Iranian Bahá'í family in 1965, Omid Djalili has always been a naturally funny person but his earlier ambitions were towards serious acting. Having studied drama at the University of Ulster Coleraine, and spent a period touring Glasnost-era eastern Europe in experimental theatre, the stand-up idea was suggested by Annabel.

Omid had a go at more or less being himself on stage, and has succeeded beyond all expectations—helped along by his winning personality, his hilarious observation of cultural peculiarities and, one might say, the forces of history. Post-September 11 and suddenly the whole world wants to know about middle-eastern culture, Islam and the rise of fundamentalism. It's a case of Djalili being in the right face at the right time, and not shying away from the painful subjects of our age in his comedy.

Ironically, as a result of his comedy success, Djalili is now acting more than ever before—small parts in Gladiator, The World is not Enough, The Mummy and Notting Hill have been followed by more substantial roles in The Spy Game, Anita and Me and Mean Machine.

And the offers just keep on coming. He's just completed a leading part in the boxing movie, The Calcium Kid with Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom.

But for Djalili, the important thing is to get his message across—that the answer to the world's problems is to celebrate and enjoy cultural diversity not see it as a threat. As the Guardian newspaper recently wrote, “If we dropped Omid Djalilis all over the West instead of bombs across the Middle East, the world would be a far happier place.” RW