Tahar Rahim is a French actor of Algerian descent. He is known for his starring role as Malik El Djebena in the 2009 award-winning French movieA Prophet by Jacques Audiard, FBI Agent Ali Soufan in The Looming Tower, and for playing Judas in the film Mary Magdalene, written by Helen Edmundson. Rahim has demonstrated multilingual skills and an ear for accents, having acted in Corsican and Arabic in addition to French in A Prophet, and in Scottish Gaelic for his role as the Seal Prince in Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle.
Early life
Rahim was born in Belfort, France, into a family that had immigrated from the region of Oran, Algeria. After earning a Baccalauréat at the Lycée Condorcet of Belfort, he enrolled first in Sports and then Computer Science programs. After two subsequent years of an unmotivated boredom with the subjects in Strasbourg and Marseille, Rahim decided to pursue his passion and began to study film at the Paul Valéry University of Montpellier. His life as a film student was chronicled in a documentary by fellow BelfortainCyril Mennegun titled "Tahar, student", aired on French TV channel France 5 in 2006. Following this, Rahim moved to Paris in 2005 and studied drama at the Laboratoire de l'Acteur under Hélène Zidi-Chéruy while working in a factory during the week, and in a night club on weekends to make ends meet.
Career
In mid-2006, after signing with an agent, Rahim won a part in the hit Canal+television seriesLa Commune written by Abdel Raouf Dafri. Dafri penned the first draft of the script to A Prophet. Rahim then met Audiard when the two coincidentally shared a cab while leaving a set. Tahar introduced himself saying that "I knew it was Audiard and I said I was a fan but I think I was a bit silly" and was afterward very surprised that Audiard remembered him enough to contact him about A Prophet. After a two-line appearance in 2008 horror movie Inside starring Béatrice Dalle, he went through a gruelling three months of auditioning. After eight callbacks, he landed his breakthrough role. Rahim also starred in controversial Chinese director Lou Ye's film Love and Bruises. The director, twice banned from making movies by the Chinese government, likely met Tahar at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where they were each presenting Spring Fever and A Prophet respectively. Love Bruises is the adaptation of the banned biography of Jie Liu Falin. Another project he starred in was Des hommes libres, the biopic on :fr:Si Kaddour Benghabrit|Si Kaddour Benghabrit, founder of the Great Mosque of Paris, directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi of Le Grand Voyage fame. He was selected to be on the jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. He is currently starring in the European crime drama television series The Last Panthers. In 2018, he appeared as Judas in the film Mary Magdalene, written by Helen Edmundson. In the U.S., he has a starring role as FBI agent Ali Soufan in The Looming Tower.
Personal life
Rahim is married to French actress Leïla Bekhti, whom he met while filming A Prophet in 2007.
Filmography
Theatre
2007 – 2008: Libres sont les papillons in the role of the blind character Benjamin. The play was written by Leonard Gershe, directed by Hélène Zidi-Chéruy and staged at the Côté Court Theater, 11th arrondissement of Paris.
