Rami Malek, Professional Outcast, Becomes ‘The Amateur’

The first time the world got a good look at Rami Malek, computer screens were reflected more often than not in his distinctive peepers. As the star of “Mr. Robot,” Sam Esmail’s zeitgeisty TV series about a psychologically damaged hacker’s fight against the billionaire class, Malek seemed a creature of zeros and ones, shrinking into the omnipresent black hoodie of the show’s protagonist, Elliot Alderson, even as his actions as a keyboard warrior shook the globe.

But in his most famous role to date, Malek rocked the world in a very different way. He earned an Oscar for his performance as the Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the blockbuster rock-star biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But underneath the glitz, the glamour and the mustache, Freddie was much like Elliot: an underestimated outsider who thrust himself into the spotlight through sheer force of will.

At first glance, Malek’s new film, “The Amateur,” feels like a return to the world of digital skulduggery he inhabited in “Mr. Robot.” In this action thriller adapted from Robert Littell’s novel and directed by James Hawes, Malek stars as Charlie Heller, a C.I.A. cryptographer who takes matters into his own hands when his compromised superiors refuse to arrest the mercenaries who murdered his wife. Lacking the killer instinct to get up close and personal with his targets, he instead uses his intellectual know-how to devise a series of elaborate booby traps that take them down one by one.

But Malek sees a through line that connects all three characters: They’re outsiders who prove their doubters, including themselves, wrong. “It may be an action movie, but one of the themes is personal transformation,” Malek said. “Sometimes we go to the cinema to see someone race to a telephone booth and don a cape in order to do so. Freddie put on his own cloak onstage. Elliot famously had a hoodie. I’ve had moments of personal transformation throughout my life — we all have. For Charlie, it’s a willingness to take matters into his own hands.”

In a video call from New York, Malek talked about putting his own inimitable spin on the action hero. The following are edited excerpts from that conversation.