Manoj Sood

Sood, Manoj

Manoj Sood, actor (born at Mombasa, Kenya 5 May 1962). Manoj Sood immigrated to Canada in 1964, was raised in Calgary, and studied film at St Michaels University School in Victoria, BC.

Sood began taking acting lessons in his late twenties. Multiple appearances in the early 1990s in movies-of-the-week and television guest roles on Survival on the Mountain, Doomsday Rock, Breaker High and Viper pushed him into much higher quality and more varied characters in the action adventure Romeo Must Die (2000), the screwball comedy Rat Race (2001), the FOX TV hit American Meltdown (2004) and the fantasy romance Fetching Cody (2005). He became better known to Canadian audiences with roles on The Dead Zone and Da Vinci's City Hall. Even when he appeared only in brief scenes, he commanded every second of screen time with expert vocal and physical delivery.

It was his natural comedic ability and timing that led to Sood's casting in the CBC comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie in 2006. A surprise international hit, Little Mosque is a sweetly contentious take on a fictional Saskatchewan town whose Muslim inhabitants establish a mosque in the rented parish hall of the local Anglican church. Sood plays Muslim fundamentalist Baber Siddiqui, a recent immigrant to Canada who has difficulty understanding and co-existing with both the Christians and the westernized-Muslim population of the town. Beloved by fans for Babir's "rants," Sood's role could be read as conventional or even bland on paper, but he has transformed it into one of the most developed and nuanced characters on the series.

Manoj Sood has appeared in numerous other films and television series, among them the miniseries Human Cargo (2004), Robson Arms (2005) and Godiva's (2005, 2006). He appeared in the Hollywood blockbuster Watchmen (2009) and had parts in 3 of Carl Bessai's features, Fathers & Sons and Repeaters (both 2010) and Sisters & Brothers (2011).