Biography

Kario Salem won the Emmy, Peabody, and Broadcast Film Critics awards for writing HBO'S 'Don King "Only in America", which won the Emmy for Best Television Movie of the year. Mr. Salem was also nominated for both Emmy and PEN awards for HBO 'The Rat Pack'. In addition to major rewrites of the original Fast and Furious and THE Rundown, he wrote 'The Score', starring Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando, Chasing Maverics, starring Gerard Butler, and MLK and , both in development for Steven Spielberg. He recently completed the pilot script for a limited series at FX called The Fall Of The House of FIFA, produced by Tony Krantz, and an original drama for Wiip called 'Gangsters OF Espionage'. Mr. Salem is also a singer-songwriter who directed a music video for his song 'Stand Down', starring Billy Bob Thornton-winning Best Video at the Toronto, Harlem, Los Angeles, and Venice Film Festivals. His self-titled EP, recorded with members of War On Drugs, Vampire Weekend, Edwin Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, and Jeff Beck, has been featured on KCRW and other radio stations around the world. His latest singles, Captive (Your Hooks) and Aliyah (Against The Sky) are building on that success with an LP to come in the fall. Mr. Salem's career began as an actor. After leaving The Julliard School of Drama, he guest-starred in over 100 TV shows, including as the ghost of a dead soldier in an Emmy award winning episode of MASH, directed by Alan Alda, and as Mike Pasquinal in James Michener's, Centenial. He can also be seen as Jean, the French gangster, in the film 'Killing Zoe', directed by Roger Avary, and as 'The Grand Inquisitor' in 1492, Conquest of Paradise, directed by Ridley Scott. As for the theater, he has starred or costarred in multiple productions, including as Cousins in Major Barbara and Twelfth Night with Cherry Jones and Diane Lane at ART in Boston, on Broadway as Scoop in the Heidi Chronicles with Mary McDonnel, and Off Broadway as Hungry Mother in the Dallas and Soho Rep productions of Eric Overmyer's Native Speech, and again at Center Stage in Baltimore with Samuel L. Jackson.
- IMDb mini biography by: Kario Salem