See also Biography Index (Z) :: Filmography Index (Z) :: Discography Index (Z)

Born in the early eighties in Morocco, Zineb Oukach grew up in Casablanca, the so mythic city of North Africa that gave her name to the famous Bogart-Bergman movie. Maybe an early sign of her destiny…
She was very young fascinated by cinema. She had a visceral hungry for seeing as many movies she could, in a country and time where movies where rare, due to heavy censorship of the Hassan II reign, poor local TV programs and absence of satellite. One of her uncles, a cinema lover, made this birthing passion a little bit easier by letting her watch his heteroclite collection of tape recorded movies. She was spending almost all her free time watching these films, from famous Hollywood blockbusters to old European movies.
Her childhood was also a mix of different emotions and cultures, which contributed to build her sensibility. From Moroccan parents, she was educated in French schools. This made her learn both cultures, Arabic and religious through her parents, and French and atheist through her school. To a certain extent, she was however also lost between these 2 very different cultures, not knowing which were her true roots nor even mother language. Also politics were part of her childhood, with parents very concerned and defending all sorts of injustices in the world and had a certain admiration for famous French advocate Jacques Vergès, always defending lost causes. Zineb thinks today that if she had not become an actress, she would have been dreaming to be an advocate or a grand reporter.
As of the age of 16, she started to work as a photo model in Morocco, for magazines and advertising. Probably the only way for her in that time in Morocco to be in front of a camera. This enabled her to also know her first experience as an actress, for a TV commercial. Her passion started to become a reality, but although she was more and more dreaming of becoming a professional actress, she felt it too far away to truly believe in it.
More realistically, she starts a degree in economics in Morocco, and leaves the country after this at the age of 22 to study in France (Nancy) to obtain a Master degree in Marketing and Communications. But more and more, month after month, she realized that her life was not in business but in cinema. After just a year in Nancy, she decides to take the risk of her passion and go in Paris, to learn acting.
Zineb becomes a student at Eva Saint Paul Theater School and then at the famous Cours Florent, recommended by a few friends she starts to get in the acting field. But she realizes that the system didn’t fit her needs and personality. She follows in parallel a few sessions with Jack Waltzer, from Actors Studio, where she learns the American method, which she felt much closer to, and very different from all her learnings so far.
In September 2006, one of her teacher of Cours Florent calls her to go to a casting for an American movie. Without really believing but with all hope of her heart, she goes there and meets Gavin Hood, who immediately hires her for the role of Fatema in Rendition, together with famous and Oscar winning actors Streep, Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon.
This was just the beginning of a dream come true, for a passionate and sensible cinema lover.
Zineb hopes her performance in Rendition and her beginning visibility will give her the opportunity to be seen and selected by the best directors, be it in Hollywood or more engaged cinema style that fits her complex personality of modern an