Hafsia Herzi

Hafsia Herzi is a French actress, screenwriter, and director. She is best known for her debut role in the Franco-Tunisian feature film The Secret of the Grain.

Herzi was born on 25 January 1987. She is of Tunisian descent through her father and Algerian descent through her mother. The youngest of four children, she has two brothers and a sister named Dalila. Following her parents' divorce, her father remarried in Algeria, while her mother settled in Marseille, where Herzi grew up.

Herzi made her film acting debut in 2007 starring in The Secret of the Grain. Her early acting career gained further visibility with roles in feature films such as 2011's House of Tolerance and 2016's Sex Doll. In addition to her work in French cinema, she expanded into American independent films, appearing in titles such as War Story and This Teacher.

Alongside her acting career, Herzi transitioned into filmmaking. She directed her first feature film, You Deserve a Lover, in 2019. She followed this with her second feature film, Good Mother (Bonne Mère), which was released in 2021.

Throughout her career, Herzi has earned several notable awards for her work in film. For her debut performance in The Secret of the Grain, she won the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 64th Venice International Film Festival and the César Award for most promising actress in 2008. As a director, her film Good Mother was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Ensemble Prize. In 2025, she won the César Award for Best Actress for her performance in Borgo, directed by Stéphane Demoustier.

In her personal life, Herzi has a son with her partner, cyclist Nacer Bouhanni. Following an altercation in 2017 with a chauffeur who declined her request for a detour—during which Herzi stated the driver had made sexual innuendos regarding her film roles—she was initially cleared of insult charges before being found guilty of non-public racial insult by the Court of Appeal of Paris.