by Sherif Awad
Specially for www.MeetingVenus.com
-It’s funny. Nobody really led me towards the arts but I found my way in anyway. I started writing poems when I was when I was about nine years-old and then moved towards prose and theatre and eventually to films and TV and towards writing screenplays as well. Even though some of my relatives did music, there has never been another actress in my family. I’m the first and while it’s nice not having to live up to somebody’s expectations or image, at the same time, it would be great to have someone who knows the business and could tell me what I was doing wrong, especially when I was starting out two years ago.
-I don’t really remember who were my role models back then. With one exception – Leonard Nimoy. He brought me to science fiction thanks to his role as Spock in the original STAR TREK series and films and when you look at his memoirs and other work (he was also a director, writer, poet, singer and a photographer), you discover that he was a hardworking, kind, decent and deeply artistic man who wasn’t perfect but loved what he did and loved his family. How could I possibly not admire that?
-I like to learn by experience, so I’ve never studied acting. You can, of course, study the theory and it can help, but in the end, it’s all about the live thing anyway. That said, I don’t discourage young people from going to drama schools, it can bring them a lot of useful knowledge and contacts but this wasn’t the path I took, for multiple reasons, and I don’t regret it. There aren’t many acting schools in my country and those that are here prepare actors for careers primarily in the theatre which is amazing but not my priority.
-My goal is to be a working actor, not to have to do a day job. Of course, I love writing almost as much as acting, so I want to do that too. Like I once said on Quora: I didn’t come into the acting world with the vision of achieving fame and fortune. If it happened, okay, yes, I would accept it. But if it doesn’t happen, I can still live a wonderful life filled with what I love – acting and writing. And of course, I’m always happy when someone watches and enjoys my work.
-I haven’t personally faced any real challenges and I’m grateful for that. The only possible limitation I feel, considering my gender, concerns the way I look, the way I’m typecast. I’ve always had a baby face but my big acting dream is to play a really juicy action role, a superhero, super villain, spy or an assassin, which usually doesn’t coincide with having baby face. That’s one of the reasons why I’m training super hard to be athletic and strong.
-I don’t truly follow the situation in my country too closely since I’ve profiled as an international actress from the beginning of my acting career in February 2017. However, foreign productions aside, the situation is far from perfect. Not so many films get made, and those that do, often leave a lot to be desired, which doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good films. Just not as much as in the past.
-About new roles I get: I approached them first by always asking myself: Who the character is? What does she want to do? What’s stopping her? Why is she the way she is? And I take it from there.
-I’m always working on something – that’s one advantage of also creating your own work. But right now, I’ve finished recording voice-overs for two short Marvel animated films. I voiced Mary Jane Watson in both of them which was awesome since Spider-Man is my number one favorite Marvel hero and I would love to play someone from the Spider-verse one day (maybe Black Cat or Silver Sable? :)) I do a lot of voice work in general since I have my own recording set-up. It’s super fun, even though I still prefer live acting.
As for the future, I have several feature films lined up, due to film later this year or the next. And then there’s my own directorial feature film Lonely in London which is currently in the phase when we (aka the production team) are putting together the funding. It’s an intimate superhero drama with a female superhero. And that’s just acting, I’ve got plenty more projects I’m working on as a writer, for example a dark drama taking place in Hollywood titled AMERICAN NIGHTMARE.
