David Dastmalchian

Birth Date: 21/07/1977

A Kansas-raised, Chicago-trained actor with Iranian and European heritage, David Dastmalchian built his career on outsiders, eccentrics, and characters at society's edges. Graduate of DePaul University's Theatre School, he overcame addiction before landing his film debut in The Dark Knight. Best known for Calendar Man in Batman: The Long Halloween, Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad, and the Riddler in the upcoming Batman: Knightfall trilogy.

David Dastmalchian’s Journey from Chicago Stage to Animated Gotham

Born July 21, 1975, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Overland Park, Kansas, David Dastmalchian came up through Chicago’s theater circuit after training at The Theatre School at DePaul University. Stage productions of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Sam Shepard’s Buried Child at the Shattered Globe Theatre forged the precision and emotional depth that would later define his screen work. Before those credits arrived, he spent years working through a heroin addiction – experiences he transformed into the semi-autobiographical screenplay Animals, which earned him the Special Jury Prize for Courage in Storytelling at SXSW 2014.

The Dark Knight and a Career Built on Outcasts

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) handed Dastmalchian his film debut as Thomas Schiff, an Arkham patient weaponized by the Joker. One scene, no margin for error – and he left a mark. That ability to make the peripheral feel essential became his calling card. Denis Villeneuve called on him three times: Prisoners (2013), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune (2021), where he played the menacing Piter De Vries. James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021) finally gave him a superhero platform of his own as the emotionally resonant Polka-Dot Man, a character whose bullied origins mirrored Dastmalchian’s own childhood struggles with vitiligo.

Batman: The Long Halloween and the Voice Work

Dastmalchian’s animation credits cluster heavily around DC’s catalogue. In the two-part Batman: The Long Halloween (2021), he voiced Calendar Man – a Hannibal Lecter-style figure locked in Arkham who guides Batman through a serial killer investigation. The role played directly to his talent for quiet menace and intellectual unease. He returned to voice the Penguin in Part Two, voiced Gredon in Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, voiced the Flash in Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes and Huntsmen, Part Two, and brought Veb – a gelatinous Quantum Realm creature – to life in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).

Count Crowley, Late Night with the Devil, and What Comes Next

Outside performing, Dastmalchian launched the Dark Horse horror comic series Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter in 2020, writing multiple volumes. His production company Good Fiend Films followed in 2023, the same year his lead performance in Late Night with the Devil earned him the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Lead Performance. Currently starring as Gurathin in Apple TV+’s Murderbot (2025) and appearing as Mr. 3 in Netflix’s One Piece (2026), his output keeps expanding across live-action, animation, comics, and production.