In a new interview with the Guardian, the Oscar-winning actor — who is Egyptian — claimed that he was once racially profiled by the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I got thrown on the bonnet of an LAPD cop car because someone had robbed a liquor store and stolen a woman’s bag,” he recalled, before claiming that he was told the suspect was “of Latin descent.”
“You fit the description,” he remembered the cops saying to him.
“I remember how hot that engine was, they must have been racing over there and it was almost burning my hands,” he said, explaining that he was only released because his “Caucasian” friend “was clever enough to go, ‘Actually, sir, he’s Egyptian. Not Latin.’”
“I remember laughing on the cop car, thinking, ‘OK, this is a very precarious situation. I may well be going to jail for something I’ve not done.’”
You can read the entire interview here.