'Bible' Satan actor Mehdi Ouazzani amused by comparisons to Obama

'Bible' Satan actor Mehdi Ouazzani amused by comparisons to Obama

[link to www.calgaryherald.com]

CASABLANCA, Morocco — Mehdi Ouazzani isn’t the devil, but he has played one on TV — only he didn’t realize that some thought he looked like President Barack Obama while he was at it.

A veteran Moroccan actor with decades of film experience, Ouazzani was bemused to wake up one morning and find that his role in The History Channel’s popular five-part miniseries “The Bible” had become the latest way for conservative commentators in the United States to needle the president.

“One morning somebody called me and said ‘you have to look at your email’ and I was so surprised,” Ouazzani told The Associated Press in Casablanca before jetting off to the remote desert town of Erfoud, where he’s playing a police inspector in a German crime drama.

“For someone like me, a simple unknown actor, to find himself in a controversy like this — even though it’s nonsense — it makes me known around the world, so it’s something positive,” he said with a chuckle.

With grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, an expressive face and a slim Errol Flynn-style pencil moustache, Ouazzani doesn’t look a great deal like America’s 44th president — but then he doesn’t resemble a stereotypical Satan very much either.