Jordanian-born British actor and playwright Nabil Shaban, 72, died of a brain hemorrhage on Oct. 25. Shaban was born with osteogenesis imperfect (“brittle bone syndrome”), which left him with stunted legs and lower torso. After spending most of his childhood in hospitals, Shaban studied psychology and sociology at the University of Surrey, then formed his own theater company, as no one else would cast him. He became quite a star, in London and Edinburgh, playing Hamlet, his own shows, Sideshow, The First to Go, and The Skin Horse, as well as appearing in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean, and David Hare’s Peter Gynt. He also had a respectable film and TV career: Doctor Who, City of Joy, South of the Border, Inmates, Wittgenstein, Children of Men, and Trouble Sleeping, among others. Shaban admitted that “Anything I did which may have been, in ordinary terms, fairly mediocre, they seemed to think was better than it really was, because it was a disabled person doing it. So I always took any of the complimentary comments with a pinch of salt. And I think I still tend to do that.”
