Seyneb Saleh

Seyneb Saleh was born in Aalen, Baden-Württemberg. Her mother is a German pharmacist, and her father is Iraqi. She was mainly raised in Solingen, Germany, but also spent some time in Morocco.^[1][2]

She studied acting from 2008 to 2012 at the Berlin University of the Arts in Berlin and received a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes in 2010.^[3]

After graduating Saleh performed in over 26 theater productions at the Maxim Gorki Theater, the Schauspielhaus Graz, the Volkstheater Wien, the Schauspiel Hannover, and the Deutsches Theater Berlin.^[4] She was engaged at the Schauspielhaus Graz until 2015, moving with theatre director Anna Badora to the Vienna Volkstheater. Among her performances there were roles in Yael Ronen's Niemandsland; Narrenschiff; and, in 2018, Die zehn Gebote.^[2]

In addition to her theater engagements, she has regularly worked for film, TV and streaming platforms. Saleh was introduced to a wider international audience in 2018 in Duncan Jones' neo-noir science fiction film Mute, in which she played the female lead character Naadirah alongside Alexander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd & Justin Theroux.^[5] She also had roles in the TV series Dogs of Berlin (2018); Deutschland 86 (as an Arabic speaker); the ZDF series Jenseits der Spree (2021); the award-winning German anthology series Uncivilized (2024); the German adaptation of the French cult series Call my Agent - Berlin (2025) as well as in feature films such as Toubab (2021); Was von der Liebe bleibt (2022); and Sabbatical (2023).^[6]

In 2022 her leading role in the multilingual German-Israeli Sky spy thriller series Munich Games further gained her much praise from international critics.^[7][8][9]

She plays a prominent character, BND intelligence analyst Julika Ritter, in the Netflix / Gaumont spy thriller series Unfamiliar, which is set in Berlin.^[10]

In 2022 Saleh won her first German Acting Award (Deutscher Schauspielpreis [de]) as Best Supporting Role for her performance in Toubab^[11] and a second one followed for her performance in the episode 9/11 of the German anthology series Uncivilized as Best Episodic Role in 2025.^[12]

At the 2024 Filmfestival Türkei/Deutschland [de], she was nominated for Best Actress, for her performance in Was von der Liebe bleibt.^[13]