Yasmine Al Massri

Birth Name: Yasmine Al Massri

Yasmine Al Massri is an international actress, contemporary artist and dancer. Born in Lebanon, from a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. At age 20, she moved to Paris to study, and graduated ...Show More

Yasmine Al Massri is an international actress, contemporary artist and dancer. Born in Lebanon, from a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. At age 20, she moved to Paris to study, and graduated from the prestigious L'Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris in Multimedia and live performances.Her artistic interdisciplinary career began in dancing, when in 2000 she joined the Thouraya Baghdadi's Dance company in Paris. Inspired by great choreographers, she explored classical and innovative ways of performing Arab repertoire and opened herself to world folklore, Flamenco, Salsa and African dance. Shortly afterwards she created her own personal style of performance and directed herself in numerous performance videos that have been seen in performance arts festivals around the world.Al Massri's first big break as an actress was in the award-winning Lebanese film "Caramel" written and directed by Nadine Labaki. At the 2007 Cannes Film Festival it generated tremendous critical acclaim and went on to be the most successful Arab film to date. It also got Al Massri a best actress award with the film's ensemble of actresses at the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival, and later a nomination at the Asia Pacific Screen Award 2007.In 2008, director Najwa al Najjar cast Yasmine in the lead role of her award winning film "Pomegranates and Myrrh" alongside Hiam Abbass. The film opened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and Yasmine went on to win the Youssef Chahine Best Actress award for her performance at the Rabat International Film Festival.In 2010 Yasmine starred in Julian Schnabel's internationally acclaimed film," Miral", alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Hiam Abbas, Frieda Pinto and William Dafoe. Her latest movie "The Last Friday", won the best film award at the Dubai International Film Festival 2011.Yasmine is a truly passionate, diverse and multi-talented artist, with a real gift for learning languages, beside speaking perfect English, French, Arabic and Spanish, she learnt an entirely new language for her role in "Ayrouwen", that of the 'Touareg' or the Blue men. A language spoken only by the indigenous people of the Sub-Saharan Africa.Currently, Yasmine is adding another credit to her long list of achievements as one of the Executive Producers on the film and TV adaptation of a series of books featuring an Arab Sherlock Holmes.Today she lives in Los Angeles with her husband actor and producer Michael Desante. Hide