Ashraf Barhom

Ashraf Barhom — Biography

Ashraf Barhom is a Palestinian-Israeli actor born on 8 January 1979 in Ma'alot-Tarshiha and raised in the nearby village of Tarshiha in Galilee. He trained in theatre at the University of Haifa and took his first screen role in Elia Suleiman's 2001 film Divine Intervention, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes. His lead performance in the 2003 drama In the Ninth Month earned him a nomination for Israel's equivalent of the Oscar, and in 2005 he shared a starring role in Paradise Now, which went on to an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win. He gained wider international recognition in 2007 playing Colonel Faris Al-Ghazi opposite Jamie Foxx in The Kingdom, followed by the role of the monk Ammonius in Agora and a citizen in Coriolanus. Between 2014 and 2016 he reached a broad television audience as Jamal in the series Tyrant, and he later appeared in Farha and House of David. He has also won the best actor award at the Malmö Arab Film Festival.