Top 10 Famous people you didn't know are from the middle east

1.Salma Hayek:

The amazing Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966, in the oil boomtown of Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Hayek has freely admitted that she and her brother, Sami, were spoiled rotten by her well-to-do businessman father, Sami Hayek Dominguez, and her opera-singing mother, Diana Jiménez Medina. Her surname is from her paternal grandfather, who was Lebanese. After having seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) in a local movie theatre, Salma decided she wanted to become an actress. At 12, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she pulled pranks on the nuns by setting their clocks back three hours. She was soon expelled. Only after attending Mexico City's Universidad Iberoamericana did she feel ready to pursue acting seriously , Her father, Sami Hayek Dominguez, was a rich businessman, and her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, was an opera singer. Her paternal grandfather was Lebanese.

2.Tony Shalhoub:

Tony Shalhoub spent his early life in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father emigrated from Lebanon to the United States as an orphan at the age of ten, later marrying Shalhoub's mother, who herself originated from Lebanon. When Tony was just six, he was introduced to the theater, in a school production of "The King and I". He graduated from Green Bay East High, and then graduated with a bachelor's degree in drama from the University of Southern Maine before progressing to the Yale School of Drama, which he left with a Masters in 1980.

3.Rami Malek:

Rami Said Malek (born May 12, 1981) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as the gay teenage next-door-neighbor, "Kenny" on the FOX comedy series The War at Home; for his role as Merriell "Snafu" Shelton in the HBO miniseries The Pacific; and for his role as the pharaoh Ahkmenrah in the feature films Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. In August 2010, it was announced that Malek had been cast as Benjamin in the final installment of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn , Malek was born May 12, 1981 in Los Angeles, California, of Egyptian descent, and has an identical twin brother named Sami who is four minutes younger than he is. Malek attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

4.Vince Vaughn:

Vincent Anthony (born March 28, 1970) is an American film actor, screenwriter, producer, comedian and activist. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before attaining wider recognition with the 1996 movie Swingers. He has since appeared in a number of films, including Rudy, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Return to Paradise, Old School, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Wedding Crashers, The Break Up, Fred Claus, Couples Retreat, The Watch and The Internship ,  He is of Italian, English, Irish, German, and Lebanese ancestry. and, as a child, he was raised "both Protestant and Catholic" by his Catholic mother and Protestant father.

5.DJ Khaled:

 DJ Khaled: Khaled Bin Abdul Khaled (of Palestinian origin) is a household name in the US hiphop industry. DJ Khaled (pron. 'Kaled') hits include "All I do is win" (featuring hiphop moguls Snoop Dogg, T-Pain, Ludacris ) & "I'm so hood". This successful Palestinian collaborates with Usher & Kanye West & is President for record label Def Jam South.

6.Shannon Elizabeth:

Shannon Elizabeth: She strutted her stuff as 'Nadia' from the 'American Pie' teenage boy sleazy films. She plays the sexy seductress foreign exchange student, and strips for a web cam. Daughter of a Syrian Lebanese father, we can only wonder if her Dad was OK with her sultry image.

7.Omar Sharif:

Omar Sharif, the Franco-Arabic actor best known for playing Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the title role in Doctor Zhivago (1965), was born Michel Demitri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt to Joseph Shalhoub, a lumber merchant, and his wife, Claire. Of Lebanese and Syrian extraction, the young Michel was raised a Roman Catholic. He was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria and too a degree in mathematics and physics from Cairo University with a major. Afterward graduating from university, he entered the family lumber business.

8.Natalie Portman:

Natalie Portman was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem, Israel to a Jewish family. She is the only child of a doctor father (from Israel) and an artist mother (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie's agent. She left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. 

9.Shakira:

Grammy-winning Latina pop singer Shakira was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, on February 2, 1977. Her father is a Lebanese American immigrant and her mother a native of Colombia of Italian and Spanish descent. Shakira began her musical career at age 12 and quickly captured fans throughout Latin America. She won the 2001 Best Latin pop Grammy for her "MTV Unplugged" album , Her Lebanese grandmother taught her the art of Arabian Belly Dancing so she can stay true to her Middle Eastern roots.

10.Steve Jobs:

Steven Paul Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in San Francisco, California, to students Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble who were unmarried at the time and gave him up for adoption. He was taken in by a working class couple, Paul and Clara Jobs, and grew up with them in Mountain View, California , Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin, where Jobs's Syrian-born biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali , was a student, and later taught, and where his biological mother, Swiss-American Catholic Joanne Carole Schieble, was also a student. They were the same age because Jandali had received his PhD at an early age. Jandali, who was teaching in Wisconsin when Jobs was born, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their relationship.