Hiam Abbass was born in Nazareth in 1960. She studied photography at the WIZO University in Haifa and was an actress at the Palestinian theater El Hakawati in East Jerusalem from 1982 to 1988. She also worked there as a program designer, project coordinator and fundraiser. In 1988 she left Jerusalem and settled in London, later in Paris.
In the cinema, she has appeared in numerous international productions, including: Munich (Steven Spielberg), The Visitor (Tom McCarthy) and Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve). She has worked with renowned directors such as Ridley Scott, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jim Jarmusch and Amos Gitai. Her next film is The Way of the Wind (2024) by Terrence Malick. She has also directed three short films and the feature film Héritage. She is best known on television for her role in Succession (HBO).
In the theater, she has worked with Ariane Mnouchkine, José Luis Gomez and Jean-Baptiste Sastre. Since 2012, she has been involved in social theater projects with Sastre, for example with the street choir of homeless people in Berlin, street children in Los Angeles and refugee children in Palestine. Since 2017, she has dedicated herself to a theater trilogy about social challenges, inspired by Georges Bernanos, Simone Weil and Charles Péguy. In 2023, she presented the first version of a project on L'Écriture ou la vie (Schreiben oder Leben) by Jorge Semprún with Sastre at the Festival Off d'Avignon. Schreiben oder Lebenwill be shown at the Gorki in April 2025.
