When asked whether the word chameleon describes him, Rahim smiled with disarming honesty. “I don’t think it describes who I am every day in life,” he said. “But when you hear ‘transformative actor,’ it’s always very touching and very encouraging, because it means people see you as an actor who tries to transform himself and become someone else.” That subtle distinction, between the man and the metamorphoses he undertakes, is the key to understanding his appeal.
For Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s feverish drama, Rahim’s transformation became physical. His body, he explained, had to carry the truth of a man struggling with addiction and illness. “When you have to play a character who suffers from addiction and illness, it’s inherent to the project that the character’s physical condition is visible,” he said. “Otherwise, it creates distance with the audience. I also need to go there physically so I can experience something organic.”
Pushing himself to such extremes, however, comes with real risk, something he manages with structure and care. “I had a medical team monitoring me regularly,” he said. “I knew I had safeguards to stop me when I was going too far. And I also can’t impose too much on my family and the people I love.” It is a revealing glimpse of the discipline behind his artistic freedom.
Despite the intensity of his roles, Rahim’s private life remains anchored by fatherhood. When his children were young, the conversation around his work was intentionally simple. “At first, I don’t explain my job to them, to protect them,” he shared. “But around six years old, I start telling them that I tell stories, that I show films. I tell them I do a kind of sport that changes my body a bit, but that I’m here.”
Rahim’s relationship to cinema began with that same sense of wonder. “My teenage years are more connected to cinema,” he said. “I had an almost organic love-at-first-sight feeling for the movie theater, the atmosphere, the fact of sharing a moment with strangers. That’s what brought me to cinema.” It was never simply about characters or narratives, but a collective, transformative experience, the very thing he now creates for audiences.
Working with Julia Ducournau on Alpha pushed him deeper into this realm of embodied storytelling. “Julia films bodies in a way that makes them more than a character, a presence, a stature, almost a statue,” he said. “She creates a kind of interactivity where you feel like you’re living something when you watch her films. She also directs a lot through rhythm, by shaking the actor up.”
For Rahim, building a character often begins there, with the body. “I usually start with the body, because it’s the first language we perceive from a character,” he explained. “Then the psychology takes shape and I go back and forth between the two. But it’s important for me to feel physically alive in the role.”
Yet some roles carry a deeper responsibility. Portraying Mohamedou Ould Slahi in The Mauritanian was one of them. “I was deeply moved by this true story of an innocent man imprisoned in Guantanamo for 15 years,” Rahim said. “I felt that defending this character went beyond the simple function of cinema, I wanted to stand behind those who were fighting to restore justice to him.” His approach, he said, was guided by respect, attention, and moral clarity.
Even lighter moments in his filmography required precision, as with the Monsieur Aznavour’s singing scenes. “It was a challenge to find the right balance between imitation and the role without falling into caricature,” he recalled. “I worked a lot on the voice and the singing, to the point that we had to re-record everything in the studio because I had improved too much.”
But nothing, perhaps, carries the emotional imprint of his breakout at Cannes with A Prophet. The memory is still vivid. “It was an incredible experience, I felt like I was at the eye of the storm when the audience stood up at the end,” he said. “I felt a huge wave of love and emotion, and I wanted to share it with everyone who mattered to me.”
In Marrakech, years later, that wave felt very much alive, not as nostalgia, but as momentum. Tahar Rahim has built a career defined by movement, curiosity, and the courage to disappear into others while remaining profoundly himself.