Two years in the past, Souheila Yacoub took a name from an unknown quantity – and on the opposite finish of line was Denis Villeneuve.

“I used to be so blacked out considering how unreal all of it was that I didn’t actually perceive the whole lot that occurred,” the actor tells Selection. “All I do know is he requested me to learn for ‘Dune: Half Two’ and shortly thereafter he supplied me the half – and I used to be attempting to remain skilled, however on the within I used to be crying, ‘That is so surreal!’”

One query the Swiss-born, Paris-based gymnast-turned-actor thought greatest to not ask was how she discovered her method onto Villeneuve’s radar to start with.

“I used to be so nervous that he’d made mistake – that he was really considering of another person – that I by no means dared to ask,” she laughs. “So I simply signed the contract and confirmed up on set.”

With a pedigree that features stage-work with “Incendies” playwright Wajdi Mouawad forward of eye-popping turns in Gaspar Noé’s “Climax” and Philippe Garrel’s “The Salt of Tears,” Yacoub ought to have had little trigger for concern.

And with a 2024 filmography that boasts “Dune: Half Two,” forward of star turns in Noemie Merlant’s genre-bender “The Balconettes” and Aude Léa Rapin sci-fi thriller “Planet B,” Yacoub can have little motive to ask such questions once more.

As soon as the actor stepped onto the most important set of her profession, and located herself reverse Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet, Yacoub slightly shortly overcame preliminary nerves, taking to the function of Fremen warrior Shishakli with a larger diploma of ease than ever earlier than.

“I realized a lot simply by watching Javier Bardem,” she says. “Bardem would burst out with this freedom, this large sense of play. And I stated to myself, ‘Okay, he’s bought my again, and he’s providing me the suitable to mess around and make errors as effectively.’ In any case, we’re not within the theater, we’re not reside in entrance of an viewers, so let’s strive, let’s recommend, and let’s enable ourselves to shock.”

Yacoub introduced that artistic spark again to France, the place she shortly signed on to a pair of homegrown fantasy tasks.

Within the Merlant-directed, Celine Sciamma co-written horror-comedy “The Balconettes,” Yacoub will star as Ruby – a free-spirited camgirl pulled right into a bloodcurdling plot amidst a Marseille heatwave. The actor beloved the camaraderie and sense of improvisation that Merlant delivered to set, and was proud to embody a sex-positive sex-worker who owns her physicality.

“I’ve typically performed roles that have been a little bit extra 2D,” says Yacoub. “However Noemie introduced me this explosive 3D half that spins off in all instructions. [My character] loves her freedom, loves her work, and loves her relationship together with her personal physique – and as we see this ongoing revolution in ladies’s sexuality, I believe it’s necessary to place ahead such figures.”

Yacoub will subsequent star reverse Adèle Exarchopoulos in Rapin’s “Planet B,” a “Youngsters of Males”-tinged sci-fi drama about two ladies revolting in opposition to a dystopian police state that dispatches rabble-rousers to a distant planet. Whereas Exarchopoulos performs a French botanist who finds herself off-worlded, Yacoub stars as an Iraqi refugee who leads the combat again on Earth.

Born to a Tunisian father and Flemish mom, the multilingual, multicultural actor has typically discovered herself forged into such a elements – a undeniable fact that she relishes and generally bristles in opposition to.

“I like to work in numerous languages,” says Yacoub, whose mom tongue is Flemish, who spoke German on the Swiss nationwide gymnast workforce, and who carried out in Kurdish for her function within the TV collection “No Man’s Land.”

“However on the identical time, my greatest dream is to make a Victorian costume drama, and that’s been difficult due to my background. Each time I’ve gone out for such a component I’ve been labeled ‘too fashionable.’ After all, with collection like ‘Bridgerton’ we’re starting to see that change, so I do hope that one in every of as of late I could make that dream come true.”