By Bruce C. Steele
Oscar® winning actor Rami Malek is not only the star of The Amateur, he’s one of the film’s producers, making the movie a true passion project. Based on a bestselling novel by Robert Littell, the 20th Century Studios film focuses on Charlie Heller, a brilliant analyst for the CIA who has never served as a field agent. But when his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), is killed in an international incident, and the CIA declines to track down those responsible, Charlie decides to seek justice on his own. He is the titular “amateur,” going up against an array of hardened professionals.
It’s a thriller, certainly, with edge-of-your-seat action and high tension, but it’s also a portrait of a man who pushes himself to the limits to achieve what he believes must be done. In some ways, that description also fits Malek, who spent years developing The Amateur and getting it made, with director James Hawes (One Life) and an impressive cast that includes Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Bernthal.
Malek sat down with Disney twenty-three for a one-on-one chat that became a story that appears in the Spring 2025 issue of the publication. What follows here are additional excerpts from that exclusive interview.
Malek began his journey on The Amateur when he read an early draft of the screenplay not long after he won the Best Actor Academy Award® for Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).
Rami Malek: “I read it and I liked it, but I thought it needed a bit of work. So I took a beat and came back to it, because it kept scratching at the back at the back of my head as to how to make it something special. It just never really left my mind. And so I went to [producers] Hutch [Parker] and Dan [Wilson] and said, ‘Can we work on this and get it to a place where it exceeds all the expectations of what we’ve seen in this genre before?’”
Malek describes the movie’s protagonist, Charlie Heller, as “someone who’s dealt with an immense amount of grief and is motivated by it.”
RM: “He sees things that are quite unjust and begins to speak truth to power and then takes matters into his own hands. He wishes he could emulate versions of the action heroes that he might see in his daily life at the CIA or on-screen [in movies], but essentially he discovers a natural strength.”
In some sense, Charlie remains “the amateur” throughout the film.
RM: “That’s important, because if you glorify him or take him to a place beyond being an amateur, we lose the reason why we initially wanted to tell this story. We kept that as a kind of North Star for us, that Charlie will always be the amateur. It’s the acute professionalism that he discovers in his soul and his brain that makes him exceptional.”
In some ways, Malek says, being an amateur gives Charlie a small advantage: The people opposing him don’t take him seriously.
RM: “That’s something that we collectively deal with on a day-to-day basis—this idea of being underestimated. So rather than it being a story about vengeance or revenge, it’s more an acute examination of integrity and courage.”
Charlie’s resourcefulness is also designed to surprise moviegoers. The film’s action sequences are unique to its protagonist’s skill set.
RM: “The ingenuity behind [the action] is fun. The calculation, the mathematics of it all, the ability to think outside the box. We forced ourselves to find the most ingenious ways of causing harm to individuals that perhaps deserved it without simply firing a weapon directly at them. There’s something extremely satisfying in those moments.”
Coincidentally, it was at an event for The Avengers (2012) that Malek first met Laurence Fishburne, who plays the mysterious Colonel Henderson in the film, a character first seen as a spy-craft trainer for Charlie. More than a decade later, Malek was happy finally to be opposite Fishburne on a movie set.
RM: “He’s extraordinary. There’s a reason he plays a mentor in many films—[including] some from this genre. He’s also an extremely sensitive, soulful human being. [Casting him] was an extraordinarily massive win for [the production] as a whole and for myself.”
Similarly, Malek adds, casting Rachel Brosnahan as Sarah, Charlie’s wife, was a “truly special moment.”
RM: “I knew we would have chemistry. I didn’t know that it would be that good.”
See The Amateur, from 20th Century Studios, only in theaters beginning April 11.
