His love for film goes back to his youth in Morocco. From the ages of three to fourteen, Zouhair lived with his mother, grandmother, two brothers and sister in the town of Khouribga, about 120 kilometers southeast of Casablanca. His father lived and worked in the Netherlands, as a guest worker.
Box full of movies
Once a year his father came to Morocco, always with a box full of films. The whole family would watch classics such as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or the American action film Dirty Harry several times. Arabic and Bollywood classics were also played. But when his father returned, the films disappeared in the box. “My father was a very strict man. The films were not allowed to distract us from studying, so he put the box in a room and locked it. I constantly longed for that box. When it was taken out of the attic again, I was so pleased.”
The box also symbolized something bigger. Namely: his father’s homecoming. The man he missed so much in his youth. “I dreamed so many times that Sylvester Stallone was my father. I was always looking for the hero in movies, a father figure.”
Wanting the box, but never being able to reach it himself, would symbolize the later course of his life. He always dreamed about films, but he never thought he would act in them himself.
Dreaming of leaving
Zouhair takes a sip of his mint tea, in a café within walking distance of his own office near Rotterdam Central Station. Showing his workplace, the film awards on his desk with the text ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best International Actor’ are already promising. The large, round, colored ring on his finger, which he bought in Los Angeles, also reveals his film history.
Despite the loss of his father, Morocco was a nice place for the young Zouhair, with a lot of freedom. Due to his father’s work, they were well off compared to the rest of the city’s residents. Only his mother sometimes had to put up with him. “I was really a rebel, the fighter on the streets.”
Zouhair remembers well how he and his friends climbed onto the trucks full of melons that drove past in the street and then divided the fruit among themselves. “We really were rascals.”
Still, he dreamed of leaving Morocco, just like all his friends. “You don’t dream of becoming a doctor or a doctor or a lawyer. You dream of leaving, literally.” Zouhair could leave, but his father did not allow this yet. He was afraid that Zouhair would go down the wrong path in the Netherlands, as happened to other young people in the area. It was a matter of patience, Zouhair knew. “Before I was 18, I had to go to the Netherlands, otherwise it would no longer be possible. That was the rule at the time.”
The Netherlands is a paradise
When Zouhair was 14 years old, his parents decided to reunite the family in the Netherlands. His youngest brother’s diabetes, which could be better treated in the Netherlands, played a role in that choice. Zouhair was jumping, the Netherlands was a paradise for him. “Everything was well organised, the street was clean, the greenery was well maintained. Every morning there was milk on the table, jam, butter, peanut butter, duo penotti. I didn’t know that. In Morocco you only bought milk if you had guests and coffee was available. I suddenly felt very rich.”
He lived in Breda, the city where he was born. He immediately went to language school, because he wanted to be able to talk to other people as quickly as possible. “I’m a very social boy.”
But learning that language also caused him a lot of frustration. “The most frustrating thing was when I went to a supermarket and couldn’t say what I wanted.”
Strict rules father
The paradise of the Netherlands became less and less beautiful. Because of the language, but also because of his father’s strict rules. His mother in Morocco approved of a lot of things. “My mother is a very sweet woman.” His father was also sweet, but a lot stricter. “He was very charmed by the Dutch way of raising children.” That meant: no going outside after 8 p.m., mandatory work as a newspaper deliverer and no siestas during the afternoon.
And what happened next is perhaps not surprising. While his teenage friends shook off the frustration by kicking a football, Zouhair opted for a different solution. He watched movies. “Every night I watched at least one movie, often two. I was addicted. I couldn’t sleep without watching a movie. I had to do that on time, otherwise my father would come around the corner.”
Escape
He often saw himself as the hero in the film. This especially applied to heroes from Bollywood films (Indian films) that he often watched in Morocco. “People from Morocco have a lot of affinity with people from India, because of the music, but also because a large part of the Indian population believes in Islam.” In the Netherlands, Zouhair mainly watched American films. “It was really kind of my escape.”
Zouhair was eager to make films his career, but had no idea how. “I didn’t know anything about the existence of acting schools. In a city like Breda that was also unknown. I thought: only Americans play in films. How am I supposed to get involved? My dream seemed so impossible that I stayed there for a long time. I didn’t do anything with it.” He received pre-vocational secondary education advice at the language school and then completed a secondary vocational education course, during which he partly worked and studied.
He is silent for a moment. Then he says: “In retrospect, I think it’s a shame that a teacher didn’t see that acting might be something for me. A mentor is so important for a child.”
No diploma, no piece of paper
Zouhair was advised at secondary vocational education to work as an administrative assistant. That was a complete mismatch. He quit his education and started working in a factory. “I went from one factory to another because I couldn’t keep it up. That production work, standing at one machine all the time. It was hell, really hell.” He thought back to the first generation of Moroccans, who came to the Netherlands as guest workers and also worked in factories. He also thought about his own parents and how much they gave up for the family. ‘Should I do the same?’ Zouhair thought. “Is this my fate?”
He went to work as a security guard in a shopping center. He enjoyed it, but something always nagged at him. His favorite place in the shopping center was Videoland. A boy worked there, just as much of a film fanatic as Zouhair, with whom he would talk for hours. “We only talked about films. Have you seen that one? And that one? I also constantly thought up scenarios for films in my head.”
“When I’m 80, I can’t look at myself in the mirror if I haven’t even tried,” he told himself.
He searched the internet for an amateur company and found one in Amsterdam: theater group Los Zand. He had no education, zero experience, but still auditioned and was chosen. “Apparently I did something in the audition that made them find me interesting.” Not much later, Zouhair drove from Breda to Amsterdam every Tuesday evening to rehearse in a kind of community center. “It was a very nice, kind, Dutch family, who made one performance a year.”
After months of rehearsals, he was finally allowed on stage. And there, on that stage in a theater in Amsterdam, something happened. “I was flabbergasted,” he says. “I was flying and at the end of the performance I came back. That applause from those people and all the people who come to you in the foyer.”
‘This is what you can do’
It was the moment Zouhair knew for sure that he wanted to do this for the rest of his life. “My whole body said with 100 percent certainty: this is what you can do.”
The switch turned. Zouhair joined an amateur company in Breda and before he knew it, he was playing his first paid performance: Vuurdansers. About a queer Algerian and a Dutch boy who get into a relationship with each other. He then joined a professional company in Utrecht: theater group DOX. “I played there for three years. Then I really got into the world.”
He was a self-taught actor, meaning he never received any training. It was only when he joined DOX, at the age of 27, that Zouhair ended up in a talent development program. “I was actually too old, but the director had put in a good word for me. I learned a lot from that company.”
The more he learned, the better he became and the more assignments he won. In addition to acting, Zouhair also started appearing in series and films. He played roles in series such as Vermist, Penoza or Flikken Maastricht. And he won several prizes for his performances in ‘Hitchock-Hitchock’ and ‘De Kleine Astronaut’. For the latter film he received the ‘Best International Actor’ award in Los Angeles.
Zouhair also played Marouane in the fourth season of the series Mocro Mafia.
Keep looking
He moved from Breda to Rotterdam. His network in the film world continued to grow. He also met his great love Estelle, with whom he now has a 2-year-old son, Noah. He beams when he talks about his family.
In addition to all that beauty, the war in the Middle East keeps him very busy. It feels double for Zouhair, herself an Arab, to talk about herself in this interview. “Please acknowledge each other’s pain, because only through this can we become closer,” is his message. “Pain knows no boundaries, no difference and no race. Please let us grieve together.”
The 43-year-old Zouhair has now been in the film world for sixteen years. Yet it seems to be only the beginning. With glittering eyes he talks about perhaps his greatest role to date. In the film De Vuurlinie, the war story about the Dutch officer Marco Kroon, Zouhair plays the police chief who Marco Kroon encounters during his mission in Afghanistan. “I play the bad guy a bit. I am a narcissist, sadist and disturbed. I am really Marco Kroon’s nightmare.”
Sometimes he cannot even comprehend where he is now. Like the other day, when he went to see the film in the cinema with his in-laws.
“When I think about where I have come from, I find it quite special. Then I am really proud of myself. I succeeded because I always kept persevering and looking for what I really like. That search for finding This is the most difficult. But if you find that, persevering takes little effort.”
Little Zouhair, for whom films have had such a great significance in making it big, never imagined that his quest would bring him to this moment: him on the big screen. He plays the bad guy, but feels like the hero. Zouhair is living his dream, his own scenario, in real life.
Sunday interview
Every Sunday we publish an interview in text and photos of someone who does or has experienced something special. That can be a major event that the person deals with admirably. The Sunday interviews have in common that the story has a major influence on the life of the interviewee.
Are you or do you know someone who would be suitable for a Sunday interview? Let us know via this email address: Zondaginterview@rtl.nl
Read the previous Sunday interviews here.
2023-10-22 06:27:45
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