Nour
Lighting Up The Silver Screen
By Amy Mowafi
July 2007

She’s a woman whose striking features have defined her. For the luscious Lebanese actress Nour, beauty has been her passport to success as well as her nemesis. It helped her land a starring role in 2000’s Short wa Fanelah wa Cap (Shorts, A T-Shirt & A Cap) but for years it also prevented her from playing the complex roles she desperately sought. Having recently proved her patronisers wrong with a slew of critically acclaimed movie roles, she’s shown the Arab world that she’s a woman who is as talented as she is tantalising. So when it came to choosing the perfect cover-star for our ‘beauty’ issue, she was our first choice. Enigma’s Fashion Director Maissa Azab set to work creating a truly fabulous futuristic landscape in which to showcase Nour in the summer’s hottest metallic looks. While Senior Editor Amy Mowafi sat down with the sexy star to talk life, love and doing your own laundry….

Every woman knows she ought to maintain an air of mystery. Beauty is subjective and is too often in the eye of the beholder who feels he knows very little…and is desperate to find out more. Nour is a woman who seemingly understands that exceptional allure comes with a certain aloofness. The feline azure-green come-to-bed eyes give very little away, but hint at a million and one little secrets. Coupled with her seductive half smile and her demure and deliberate movements, she is the type of woman who men fall in love with from across the room. The type of woman who made men across the region giddy with lust. She has a look and an attitude that is rare in millennial movies; one that conjures up atmospheric images of glamorous black and white films, when men were men, and women where seductively stoic. Nour belongs on the silver screen. Not that she sees it that way.

“I would never ever have imagined I’d end up being an actress,” she says, as our hairstylist tousles her lush dark locks in preparation for our shoot. “As a child I was incredibly shy and very quiet. In a group I’d be the only one who didn’t speak. I would never joke around and would always prefer to have a low profile. I was so shy that if someone said hello unexpectedly I would get really embarrassed.” Childhood for the French-educated Lebanese beauty was an idyllic experience, with Nour happily growing up in the shadow of her “naughtier, cheekier” sister. Her rare moments in the spotlight came on the sports field. “When it came to outdoor activities, I was always top of the class!” she says. “In fact I was cross country champion at my school.” The importance of a fit and healthy body has remained with her, and the extra weight she claims to have gained in the last six months, due to a hectic schedule of back-to-back blockbusters, is causing some distress. “I’ve added five kilos almost overnight, but all my life I’ve exercised at least two hours a day,” she says. “I need to because I love my food so much! It’s been harder to keep that up recently as I’ve been incredibly busy, but exercise makes a big difference, not only to the way I look but the way I feel.”

Other than the lack of exercise, Nour is looking and feeling great, and deservedly so. Her big screen debut in 2000’s Short wa Fanelah wa Cap, starring alongside Egyptian heartthrob Ahmed El Sakka, may have seen her immediately pigeonholed as the ‘pretty face’ suitable for little more than simplistic romantic roles. Yet she’s been working determinedly and impressively ever since to defy stereotypes. “As a beautiful woman it was hard to be taken seriously at first,” she admits. “But I’ve now proved people wrong. It took me a while, but I got there!” Her groundbreaking and risky role in 2005’s Mallaki Iskandariya (Private Alexandria) saw her dramatically cut off her locks, shave off her eyebrows and play the bad guy (or in this case, the bad girl), to memorable effect. From that moment on, she’s commanded a whole new level of thespian respect. She’s still a ‘babe’ with box-office pulling power, but one that can hold her own when faced with a complex character. “I’ve tried to pick roles that go against the grain,” she says. “Parts that people may not necessarily expect me to play, and I always try to make sure each role is different from the previous one.”

The determination to make a credible mark is at odds with her casual entrance into the acting establishment. “When I was first approached to travel to Egypt and act I refused,” she says. “It was a shock to everyone. Me? Act? I’m the last person in the world you’d imagine doing that job. But the production company – the Adel Group – was very persistent. So I started to think why not? I decided to accept, but I was looking at it as simply a hobby, a new experience, something interesting and different to do. After all what’s a couple of months in Cairo every year?”

A couple of months turned into seven life-changing years during which she left the shy girl of yesteryear behind and emerged as an independent woman who knows her own mind. “At first living alone in Cairo was very hard,” she says. “I’m incredibly attached to my family, my sister and my friends. I’m such a homey person that the experience was quite wrenching. For a while it felt like I was living this strange double life.” Like any young person taking their first tentative steps into the real world, the practicalities of independent living posed the biggest challenge. “I had no idea how to do anything on my own,” she says giggling. “I didn’t even know how to switch on the washing machine. Doing my own laundry was a bigger deal than I would have imagined and the idea of changing a light bulb filled me with dread. But you learn and Cairo’s great because everything is open 24 hours a day so there’s always someone willing to help. I’m a different person because of the experience, a much stronger and tougher woman than I might ever have been. Yes there are times, during special occasions or public holidays when everyone is with their family and I get lonely, but those are the exceptions. My parents visit me regularly and I do them, and I have some great friends who have really stood by me.”

Those friends are the same ones she had long before fame and fortune tracked her down. Fiercely private, her pickiness when it comes to the people she’s willing to allow into her life is a point she’s keen to stress. “Only the people who are closest to me are allowed in my home,” she says. “When you’re my real friend, you’re my friend for life. You can come into my home even if I’m not there and do whatever you want. But you really have to be one of my best friends. I can’t stand that awkwardness you have when you’re with someone you don’t know and trust completely. You can never be completely sure of their intentions, and I won’t have that in my private space. I hate falseness, pretentiousness and insincerity.”

With Nour having recently left her 20s behind, talk of the people closest to her naturally turns into talk of husbands, children and settling down to a different type of domestication. Does she never worry that the strength and independence she’s built during her years alone in Cairo will prove intimidating to men? Add to that her punishing work schedule and a career in an industry that’s still viewed with some suspicion. To your average Arab man, it’s an all-together threatening combination, no matter how breathtakingly beautiful she might be. Yet she’s not worried. Not in the slightest. “Let’s admit something,” she says, launching into an impassioned monologue on the idiosyncrasies of relationships in the Middle East. “The Arab man will always be the Arab man, whether he is Egyptian, Lebanese, Jordanian or whatever. The only thing that changes is the environment and the upbringing, but no matter how Westernised or liberal he might seem he is still an Arab, and he still wants what all Arab men want – a woman who wants to be a good mother and wife and will invest the necessary time and care to achieve that. And the same goes for me. Yes I am French educated and independent, but I am still Eastern. And there is nothing more I want in the world than to be a really great mum. Raising my own family is so incredibly important to me. So in that sense there’s no contradiction between what I want and what a potential Arab husband might want. I’m often asked if I’d give up my career for a family (if I had to) and the answer is always a definite yes. People often take to mean that I’m not serious about my craft, but I don’t see the relation. I’ve sacrificed a lot for my career; there are nights when I can’t sleep because I miss my parents and sister so much. But growing old alone is something I am not prepared to do. That is not what I call independence. Independence is about knowing how to choose your own path in life and following it no matter what anyone else thinks.” 

Her independence of thought is inherited. Her mother taught her is if she’s not sure whether to say “yes” or “no” to something, she should always say “no”. “Because the ‘yeses’ are always obvious, they feel right. Anything else you’re better staying well away from.” To that end she has a reputation for saying no to activities that will throw her further into a spotlight she’s reluctant to bathe in. “I’m uncomfortable with unnecessary media exposure,” she says. “I rarely do magazine shoots and interviews. I only enjoy the limelight when it really is work related. When people come up to me and say I’ve done a really good job. Otherwise I’d rather avoid it.” Ironically, it might just be this old-school variety of privacy – of mystery - that makes her one of the region’s hottest young stars. Unwittingly or not, she is cultivating an aura of untouchable beauty, a mystique out of which icons are eventually born. That is, of course, if some dashing young gentleman doesn’t spot her across a crowded room and lay claim to her first.