Producers to Middle Eastern actors: ''Don't tell anyone your real name or you'll never work again''

Tarek Bishara grew up Catholic in Brooklyn, and if he had to pigeonhole himself, it'd be as an ''artsy-fartsy, plays-tennis-on-the-weekend type.'' Hollywood, however, has always had different ideas.

After graduating from New York University in 2000, Bishara moved to L.A. The good news about being an actor of Middle Eastern descent at that particular moment in history — Bishara is the son of Palestinian immigrants from Galilee — was that the entertainment industry was in need of people to play Arabs. The bad news was why. ''I was reading for a part in a big TV show once,'' says the actor, 32. ''The scene was basically some Arab dude screaming for death before blowing himself up. I read it over and over and started sweating.'' And then he walked out.

Bishara struggled for years. And he encountered a lot of post-9/11 hostility, including at a dinner where a producer told him that no Middle Eastern person had contributed anything to society since the 15th century. Bishara ultimately changed his name to Thom Bishops and in 2004 landed his first major film role, in the Robin Williams thriller The Final Cut. ''Changing my name was just something I felt I had to do for self-preservation,'' says Bishops. ''It was in order to get around the 'He's not right for this because he's Middle Eastern' thing.'' One acting coach went so far as to tell him, ''Don't ever tell anyone in this town your real name or you'll never work again.'' The coach probably should have added: except as a terrorist.

Despite Hollywood's liberal bent, there's no shortage of minority groups insulted (or ignored) in movies and on TV. But for the past 10 years, actors of Middle Eastern descent have had a unique challenge. ''Prior to 9/11, Arab-Americans had no media identity — with the exception of Danny Thomas and Jamie Farr, who played the lovable character running around in a dress on M*A*S*H,'' says Jack Shaheen, author of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. After 2001, Hollywood's desire to portray the war on terror led to a dramatic increase in roles — but those parts tended to equate Muslims with oppression and terrorism.

It's no wonder actors with Middle Eastern backgrounds have become increasingly uneasy about playing stereotypes: Hate crimes against Arabs jumped more than 1,600 percent after 9/11, according to the FBI, while the Arab American Institute reported that 45 percent of school-age Muslims experienced incidents of bullying. Where Hollywood is concerned, the pigeonholing of such actors reflects not just ignorance but also the perpetual need for villains. ''It may have less to do with our culture of fear than the nature of Hollywood storytelling,'' says Edward Zwick, whose 1998 film The Siege was, in part, an early critique of Islamophobia. ''Hollywood has always been desperate for villains for the sake of dramaturgy. More recently than World War II, Japanese, for example, became villains once again in movies [like Rising Sun] because of their perceived economic dominance.''