Tahar Rahim (born 4 July 1981) is a French actor. His breakthrough performance was in the 2009 French film A Prophet, for which he won the César Award for Best Actor and Most Promising Actor. He has since starred as FBI agent Ali Soufan in the miniseries The Looming Tower and Judas in the film Mary Magdalene (both 2018).
Rahim garnered critical acclaim and nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for portraying Mohamedou Ould Salahi in The Mauritanian (2021). He received another Golden Globe Award nomination for portraying Charles Sobhraj in the miniseries The Serpent (2021).
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, Rahim enrolled first in sports and then computer science programmes. After two subsequent years of boredom studying 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 Belfortain Cyril Mennegun titled "Tahar, student",...More about Tahar Rahim...