In Love Anwar: The InterContinental Make-A-Wish Ball
Held on the first Saturday night in November, the ball's cohost and SocialMiami contributor Gabrielle Anwar talks about how this glamorous event has profound effects on fulfilling wishes for children facing life-threatening illnesses.
Every fall, our family begins to get excited about the annual Intercontinental Make-A-Wish Ball. We’ve celebrated together that first Saturday night in November for many years now and each year gets more and more exciting with each success and thus more and more wishes granted to more and more children!
My husband Shareef Malnik, who is the Chair of the ball and MAW Chairman Emeritus, and I cohost the evening, bringing each year a short film (once a live performance), about our personal interpretation of the theme of the ball.
Over the last 15 years, we’ve played characters (think SNL), sung songs, danced Bollywood style, played sexy spies, clowns, and this year Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth!!!
Creating the ball takes a year-long collaboration between multiple teams and the Intercontinental hotel, each year surpassing the creativity and the fiscal goal of the previous year.
Maxwell Blanford is the wizard behind the curtain of this visionary theatre, conducting from his vibrant imagination the theme of every installation. The guests, dressed in all their finery and glory, are the finishing touches on his radical masterpiece.
I will inevitably gage the success of the ball on Max’s face at the After Party when all is done. When he looks at profound peace amidst the crowd of 100’s dancing all around I am satisfied and can kick off my heels and slip my flip flops on.
Shareef has never ceased to amaze me with what he is willing to endure for our short film. As a former actress I’ve embarrassed myself countless time on camera, but asking this of my husband, who once was Miami Beach’s Galant Guru of Nightlife, is asking a lot. However, he is fearless and will do just about anything to raise a wish. He knows the profound effect a single wish will have on a child with life threatening illness. That child’s whole family and their circle of friends and extended family and the doctors and the nurses, everyone feels a Wish.
So it is with great gusto that we take to the stage again this year, after months of rehearsals, catering, design, staging, choreography and good will, we are back for more! More Wishes, more philanthropists, more good times for all of us who are blessed to be a part of such an exciting evening.
Gabrielle Anwar at the InterContinental Make-A-Wish Balls of Yesterday
Born in Berkshire, England, attending the Italia Conti Performing Arts Academy in London, the accomplished Gabrielle Anwar has over 45 film and television performances to her credit in both Europe and the States, including her breakout film Scent of a Woman, where she was whisked off her feet into an acclaimed tango with Al Pacino.
Anwar has taken on the roles of a vast array of characters: from the blind diving horse circus performer in Disney’s biopic Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken to the risqué royal in Showtime’s The Tudors, to the supercilious counterpart to Noah Wyle in TNT’s The Librarian II. And from the fatal object of desire in Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead to the regal Queen Anne in The Three Musketeers. She has also shown her versatility as an expat party girl in BBC’s adaptation of Mortimer’s Summer’s Lease, Gun toting Fiona on the hit show Burn Notice and Wicked Lady Tremaine in ABC’s Once Upon A Time.
On the board of Pikler USA, Anwar speaks frequently on early childhood care and its direct relation to mental health, most recently to congress in Washington D.C. Active in funding and bringing awareness to the life-changing work with the firm belief that educating parents and care-givers on infant interaction prevents future developmental issues, addictions, violence and general teen-adult malaise.
On the board of Young Musicians Unite as Vice Chairman and Gala Chair. YMU affords all strokes of Miami’s socio-economic children the opportunity to be educated in the joy of music.
Supporting an array of animal and childcare charities, Anwar continues to host the southern Florida Make A Wish Ball for her twelfth consecutive year, raising more than $25,000,000 in wishes for children with life-threatening illnesses.
Gabrielle and husband, Shareef Malnik are recently empty nesting with their animal menagerie. Anwar continues her lifelong passion for the written word with her first novel and pilot in development.
Anwar’s directorial debut, Sexology is available on iTunes.
