We were lucky to catch up with Ibrahim El Helw recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ibrahim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Throughout my career, I have been trying my best to choose only the projects that are meaningful to me and that convey a positive message to the audience . One of my most meaningful projects was the shooting of my last film “The Good of Man” alongside my co star Robert X. Golphin, based on a true story, in which I portrayed a muslim convenience store owner who became famous in 2009 after being subject to a robbery gone right!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a French-Egyptian actor based in Hollywood. After falling in love with acting at a very young age when portraying an emperor on stage at my school when I was just 10 years old and a police officer the next year for a short film, I always knew this was my passion. Forward a decade later, I started studying Method Acting for several years under Jack Waltzer, a lifetime member of the prestigious Actors Studio. I have always been trying to be as versatile as possible because it was this ability to portray characters from all walks of life that attracted me the most. This is what enabled me to portray a wide range of dramatic characters, from a French chef harboring a dark secret to a weathered Italian-American mobster reflecting on the passage of time, or a cartel lord. I received the “Best Duo” award for my role as a naive and desperate burglar in Cave of Da Vinci at the 2019 Actors Awards, which went on to win accolades at the Los Angeles Film Awards, New York Film Awards, and the Silicon Beach Film Festival, and won the “Best Actor Award” for my portrayal of a clumsy magician in the silent black and white film “The Proposal”. Passionate about languages, I speak fluent French, English, Arabic, Spanish and Italian.

Having grown up surrounded by diversity and adversity in the banlieues of Paris, I was immersed in different cultures at a very young age and I am always excited to explore complex characters on film. I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Psychology which allows me to delve deeply into character to uncover nuances in emotion and motivation.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Of course, the main aspect of my career that illustrates my resilience is the fact that I had to leave my country and my family 10 years ago to pursue my dreams in Hollywood. Leaving the people I cherish the most and knowing that I would only be able to see them once or twice a year is the most difficult choice I had to make in my life and that was also the price to pay to follow my passion. After a few years of hardship and struggle, the recurring thought that starts coming to your mind more and more is to just give up and go back home, that you have tried your best and that you deserve a more “comfortable” life. This is exactly when I started to build my resilience and remember the sacrifices I had to make to be able to do what I love. Day after day, I am remembering that what I want to achieve is not just for me but for my family that I love, and giving up would betray not only my dreams but my family. Coming from an immigrant background, my parents left from Egypt to France a long time ago, I have always seen my parents as the best example of resilience and I have always been inspired by them throughout my journey. Today, I understood that sailing towards your dreams is not something that you achieve overnight but over long years with a daily reminder that every step of your journey is worth it because you are doing what you love and doing it for the people you love. As a daily reminder, I also drink my coffee every morning in the same mug I have had for the past ten years that says “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I view acting and art in general as the portrayal of humanity using different mediums. When I studied psychology, it was the same empathy that I had for people that was driving me to learn more about ourselves and about others. In acting, I found that not only I could use what I learned from psychology to understand but also portray the different and diverse characters, emotions, personalities that our world is made of. I have always been inspired by my favorite actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and my acting coach who knew them personally would always tell us stories about how deep they were implicated in their craft even at the very early stages of their careers, and how they always are authentic and truthful to the characters they portray, without judging them. My motto in acting is a phrase from Robert De Niro: “There are no small roles, only small actors”. In addition to being truthful and dedicated to my craft, I have always been driven by the mission to spread a message of LOVE through acting. I believe that if only one of my projects can change a view that some people have or influence an audience positively, then I am happy. Ultimately, I feel that acting and all other forms of art have a mission to convey a message that we are all equals, with our qualities and imperfections, and that we have to learn to forgive and love one another. This message is exactly what is conveyed in my last film “The Good of Man”. That said, I am not always portraying good characters but also often get cast to portray the “bad guys”. My future projects include the portrayal of a Mexican cartel boss in the feature film “Speaker Boy” by the talented twin directors Hicham & Samir Harrag, and the portrayal of a Sicilian mafia Capo in the feature film “American Mafia 2” directed by Michael Lazar.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5748408/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
• Instagram: ibrahim__elhelw