Daily Inspiration: Meet Jenna Nimri

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenna Nimri.

Hi Jenna, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story. 
I am an artist’s daughter who was not allowed to be an artist. I grew up in Jordan with my father as a well-known sculptor. He worked as a set designer, stage designer, and costume designer for all major television, film, and theater productions. I grew up immersed in art. My father put me in my first play at 5 years old. However, at 10 years old, when I told my father I wanted to be an actress, his repose was an angry, furious no. It wasn’t until now, as a free woman in the United States, that I was able to pursue my acting career on my own. I studied theater in university, joined an acting studio in LA, got my agent, manager, started auditioning, working on my craft, and writing ever since.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road at all; not having started as a young child, coming late to the game, and trying to figure out a complicated industry on my own has been difficult, exciting, but challenging nonetheless. Especially as an immigrant… it makes things 10x harder. Being different from most people, it’s hard to feel understood, welcomed, included, or supported. Some people just don’t “get me.” I have to fight this battle on my own, and I have to believe in myself so much more to make up for those that don’t. It also feels selfish as an immigrant to purse my dreams, there’s a lot of pressure from people around me to give up in order to serve them. Middle Eastern culture can sometimes not be very supportive of those who pursue the arts. Most Arabs only respect you if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer. However, along the way, I have found a few incredible people that have been a light in my path, who support me and believe in me, and I am so thankful for them.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I needed an answer to the meaning of life, existence, and suffering. Acting, writing, and eventually directing is a way I could study life like a test subject in a controlled laboratory. A way to test how different outcomes come from different choices. There is so much I want to experience in life, but there is not enough time to do and be everything I want to be in one lifetime, so through acting and becoming different characters, I get to live a million lives in one. The human condition is fascinating to me; I love trying to understand someone’s mind and find out how they got to where they are now or what has led them to do whatever evil or good they have done. I like playing enigmatic, broken characters with a fiery, unstoppable conviction.

Art is meant to make the audience think. That is the type of art I create, no matter the medium I do it in. I like to create art that wakes the average everyday person from their mundane routine to question life, to think, and talk about uncomfortable topics like death or other taboo subjects… I want to lift the veil and uncover truths that we are too afraid to recognize and pay attention to. As a Middle Eastern actress from Jordan, yes, I am here to share my culture, but I am also a human who think and feels everything so deeply here to share my experience. Where I come from, my beliefs, ideas, language, unique experiences, and culture are what set me apart from others. I can bring something different, new, and exciting that hasn’t been seen before. One of my favorite quotes is by Isabella Rossellini, she says, “true elegance for me is the manifestation of an independent mind” and I think that’s true. In this modern world, women have been taught that in order to survive, they must be like men, and I want to balance that line of thinking by bringing a fragile femininity to my characters that can also be dangerously passionate.

How do you define success?
Freedom to do what you love.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennanimri/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/nEN6oOp0qD8
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5796490/

Image Credits
Megan Kelly
Melody Parra
Dori Rigby
Brent Newman
Danielle Wineman
Greg Perrow