Zuleikha Robinson

Born on June 29, 1977 in London, England, actress Zuleikha Robinson had the unique advantage of being English, Scottish, Indian, Burmese, Iranian and Malaysian, allowing her to play a wide array of ethnic characters. She developed a thirst for acting when she was 15, later moving to Los Angeles, CA to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her feature debut in Mike Figgis’ “Timecode” (2000), an experimental film that employed a four-way split screen to tell concurrent real-time stories centered on the Los Angeles film industry. Robinson made a brief appearance in “Timecode,” playing the unfortunate assistant to a temperamental director (Richard Edson) trying to finish his film. She landed her first regular series role on “The Lone Gunmen” (Fox, 2000-01), a short-lived spin-off of “The X-Files” (Fox, 1993-2002) that featured the three socially inept hackers Langly (Dean Haglund), Byers (Bruce Harwood) and Frohike (Tom Braidwood). Robinson played the brilliant and beautiful Yves Adele Harlow – an anagram for Lee Harvey Oswald – the chief competition for information leading to investigations of shadowy government and corporate conspiracies.

After the cancellation of “The Lone Gunmen,” she revived Yves Adele Harlow for an episode of “The X-Files” during the show’s last season. She then landed her first leading feature role with “Hidalgo” (2004), playing the feisty daughter of the crusty, but affable Sheikh Riyadh (Omar Sharif), who falls for an American cowboy (Viggo Mortensen) who is trying to win a 3000-mile horse race across the Arabian desert. Robinson gave a standout performance as Jessica, rebellious daughter of Shylock (Al Pacino), in the rarely filmed adaptation of Shakespeare’s problem play, “The Merchant of Venice” (2004). Back on the small screen, she began to firmly establish herself as an intriguing talent with a memorable role as the devious slave barmaid, Gaia, on HBO’s breathtaking historical series, “Rome” (2005-07). In the underappreciated feature drama, “The Namesake” (2006), Robinson utilized her Indian ancestry to play the daughter of expatriates who meets a young Americanized man (Kal Penn) alienating his family by dating a white girl (Jacinda Barrett). Switching ethnicities again, she played homicide detective Eva Marquez opposite partner John Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster Waldau), a man hundreds of years old and looking for the one woman who can end his immortality, in “New Amsterdam” (Fox, 2007- ).