She is notorious as the under-age escort at the heart of a scandal that shook the French football team, but Zahia Dehar has confounded her critics with a startling big screen debut at the Cannes film festival.
The former escort who was allegedly paid for sex by French football stars Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema in 2009 when she was still 17, was hailed as the “main power source” in the acclaimed French film An Easy Girl.
Algerian-born Dehar—who is known in France simply as Zahia—has since traded her trashy reputation for social media fame and her own lingerie brand.
But Easy Girl—whose title plays on Zahia’s sulphurous celebrity—reveals impressive acting talent way beyond red carpet and photocall pouting which makes her a regular in gossip magazines.
The Hollywood Reporter compared her to 1960s French screen siren Brigitte Bardot, with one scene on a beach echoing the opening of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic, Contempt.
“Her pouty, performative femininity brings to mind a young Bardot,” critic Jon Frosch wrote.
Zahia, now 27, told AFP she wasn’t in the slightest worried that people would draw parallels between the party-girl character she plays and her own life.