Mehdi Dehbi (born 5 December 1985) is a Belgian actor and theatre director, known for his roles in La Folle Histoire d'amour de Simon Eskenazy (2009, English title: He is My Girl), L'Infiltré (2011), Le Fils de l'Autre (2012, English title: The Other Son), Mary Queen of Scots (2013), and A Most Wanted Man (2014). In 2020, he played the title role in the Netflix series Messiah.
Early life
Mehdi Dehbi was born on 5 December 1985 in the Hôpital de Bavière in Liège, to a family of Tunisian origin. From the age of ten, Dehbi attended the Académie Grétry theater and music school, which had been established in the hospital building where he had been born.
At the age of sixteen his first lead role in a feature film was in The Assassinated Sun, directed by Abdelkrim Bahloul and produced by the Dardenne brothers, for which he was nominated as Best Actor at the Joseph Plateau Awards.
After studying drama and music at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, then at the CNSAD in Paris, and finally at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he pursued his career in film and theater.
In 2012 Mehdi directed his first play, Les Justes by Albert Camus at the Théâtre de Liège. The show toured in France and Germany in 2013 and in 2014 Mehdi Dehbi was nominated for the Découverte (Discovery) Prize at the 2014 Prix de la critique awards as a director.