Who Is Mahershala Ali’s Wife? All About Actress Amatus-Sami Karim

Mahershala Ali and his wife, Amatus-Sami Karim, met in 1997

While Mahershala Ali solidified his place in Hollywood with his critically acclaimed performance in 2016’s Moonlight, he landed a spot in Amatus-Sami Karim’s life nearly 20 years earlier.

Ali and Karim met in 1997 as students at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. There, the actor was in graduate school studying acting while Karim was an undergraduate student at N.Y.U.’s Experimental Theatre Wing. It would be more than a decade before the pair finally connected as a romantic couple, but Karim had a major influence in Ali’s life and faith from the outset of their relationship.

Three years after they married, in 2016, Ali gushed about his wife on Slate’s Death, Sex & Money podcast, saying: “She’s extraordinarily intelligent, she’s about the right things, spiritually grounded, a beautiful person.”

In February 2017, just four days before Ali took home his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the couple welcomed their first and only child, daughter Bari Najma.

In his speech, Ali thanked Karim, who had been pregnant throughout the entirety of the awards season circuit. “I just want to thank [my wife] for being such a soldier through this process and [helping to] carry me through it all," he said.

So who is Mahershala Ali's wife? Here's everything to know about the actress Amatus-Sami Karim and her relationship with the actor.

She is from the South Side of Chicago

While she eventually moved to New York City for college, Karim was born in Chicago where she spent her early years on the South Side.

Later, Karim’s parents divorced — her mother a social worker, her father a jazz musician and imam — and she moved with her mother to Philadelphia.

She met Ali at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts

Karim was the first in her family to attend university. She spent one year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before attending college at New York University on a full scholarship. She and Ali met while Karim was an undergraduate student and Ali was in his first of three years in the M.F.A. acting program.

Ali and Karim spoke about their early interactions on Death, Sex & Money.

“I wasn’t particularly good at talking to women,” the actor recalled. “I was a little bit of a late bloomer, with a lot of things.” He said he'd noticed Karim among a “pack of girls who’d kind of run together,” while clarifying that she had always been “an individual.”

Ali pursued Karim with a poem

In an era when spoken word poetry “was cool,” according to Karim, Ali professed his interest in her through a poem written on a postcard.

“I wrote this little poem and I walked around with that joint in my backpack for, like, a month. And then finally I ran into Amatus, and it seemed like the appropriate time to give it to her,” the star said on Death, Sex & Money.

At the time, Karim didn’t provide a response, leaving Ali mildly embarrassed. She “ignored me,” he recalled, laughing, before sweetly adding: “That’s cool. It worked out.”

Karim remembers this story from a different perspective. “Literally, he’s the most attractive person on the campus,” she emphasized, “and I’m a super-nerd.” Karim didn’t date much at the time, implying that Ali’s proposition was not something she was used to.

The following year, she went to London for an exchange program before returning to N.Y.C. while Ali was in his final year of graduate school.

She inspired Ali to convert to Islam

After Karim returned from London, she briefly reconnected with Ali. Raised Christian, his first time attending mosque was in Philadelphia with Karim and her mother, who raised her in the Muslim faith.

At the time, Karim and Ali were at different points on their spiritual paths. “I was looking for my anchor or the thing to bring structure to my spiritual walk,” Ali said in a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “She was almost coming out of it, and I was going into it.”

That day, Ali found himself in tears during the sermon despite little-to-no knowledge of Arabic. The following week, Ali returned to a mosque — this time in Brooklyn.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” he said. “It was beyond explanation. There was this connection that pierced through it all for me. And I felt like I was in the right place.” He converted to Islam that night.

She married Ali in 2013

By the time Ali and Karim married in 2013, they had known each other for nearly 20 years. “When I was in grad school, I met Amatus, who later became my wife, though there was a [period of 12 years] when we weren’t really in contact,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

The pair reconnected when Ali was living in Los Angeles and Karim was still in New York. Ali was clear about what he wanted and Karim was too.

In the years prior to the pair rekindling, Karim lost three loved ones to gun violence. “I never really thought I would ever get married, to be honest. I was just ravenous for information, doing things, traveling,” she explained on Death, Sex & Money. “But when you go through a tragedy or something crazy that tears your crap up, you then really realize and decide you’re not going to take anything for granted. It was the first time in my life that I was like, ‘Wow, I really can’t go through anything serious ever again by myself.’ ”

The couple’s understanding of one another long predates Ali’s global fame. In a 2014 interview with Elle magazine, he explained: “She and I have known each other for a really long time — we just got married a year ago — but we've known each other for 17 years. So, at this point, she's seen a big shift in things, but at the same time, she'll ground me real quick if I start feeling myself a little too much.”

She produced an Emmy award-winning documentary

According to her personal website, Karim is a “multi-hyphenate artist working as an actress, sound artist and filmmaker.” She has produced films for HBO and Netflix, worked on projects for Apple and Hulu and has served as a sound designer with the Atlantic Theatre Company.

In 2020, the HBO documentary We Are the Dream, which Karim executive produced, was released to critical acclaim. Depicting the 40th Annual MLK Oratorical Festival in Oakland, California (near Ali’s home of Hayward), the film features students taking the stage in a public speaking competition.

In a tie with The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, it went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding children's program.

Ali thanked Karim in his 2017 Oscars acceptance speech

Ali's breakthrough year in the world of film came in 2016. He garnered mass critical acclaim for playing Juan, the warm, emotionally-complicated drug dealer in Moonlight.

In his acceptance speech for the Academy Award, he said: “Lastly, I just want to thank my wife, who is in her third trimester during award season. We just had a daughter four days ago, so I just want to thank her for being such a soldier through this process and [helping to] carry me through it all.” Earlier that year, he took home the Screen Actors Guild award for the same role.

Two years later, he thanked Karim again — along with their young daughter — when he won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Don Shirley in Green Book.

Ali and Karim share a daughter

Karim gave birth to her and Ali’s daughter, Bari, in February 2017.

Throughout Ali’s awards circuit for Moonlight, Karim was visibly pregnant while publicly supporting her husband at several events and ceremonies. In an interview with The Guardian in 2019, Ali said: “My wife was pregnant with a baby. And I was pregnant with an Oscar.”

Later in December 2023, Ali spoke about his daughter on Jimmy Kimmel Live. When Kimmel asked the star where he keeps his Oscar trophies, Ali clarified that they’re “not in an obvious place,” while joking that there had recently been a new addition to his shelf.

“This past summer my daughter was doing gymnastics and she got a trophy," he said. “So, when we got back home to California, she was sure to put her trophy right in front of my Oscar.”

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