In preparation for his new film Alpha, Tahar Rahim lost 40 pounds, eating very little—sometimes sustaining himself on pistachio nuts and cherry tomatoes. He was about to play Amine, a drug-addicted man who stumbles back into his sister’s life at a crucial moment. The threat of the bloodborne disease ravaging his body also looms over his niece—the film’s titular character—after she comes home with a tattoo carved into her skin.
This kind of dedication, inhabiting his character so deeply their souls practically intertwine, is how Rahim likes to do it. “I’m always scared before I start a movie,” he tells me. “But I want to give it my all, so I went flat out. Full on.” The film’s director, the brilliant new master of body horror Julia Ducournau, warned him to be careful, but she trusted Rahim to do the right thing and set his limits. “I needed to push to make the hunger disappear, the taste disappear. I went so far that I could feel the deprivation. The lack of something. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m right at the cliff. I can fall, but I won’t.’”
Rahim has been a mainstay in movies for the past 15 years, after breaking out with a wildly impressive part in A Prophet—a gritty and phenomenal prison movie by Emilia Perez director Jacques Audiard. More recently, you might have seen him in the crime series The Serpent and—if you’re a real head—his gung-ho part in the stupidly enjoyable Madame Web.
When Alpha landed on his lap, it came loaded with the expectations that follow Ducournau’s feral work. Her films often incite fear and disgust in audiences. In her debut, Raw, a young veterinary student develops a taste for raw flesh. In Titane, the fucked-up thriller Spike Lee awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, a young woman has sex with a car and goes on a violent, murderous rampage to survive. But Alpha—a family drama about fear and displacement, with the occasional stinging hangnail—places pathos ahead of pure grossness. When it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, the shift confused some critics. Many more, myself included, found it to be earth-shatteringly sad—the kind of film you make when the world has shoeboxed you, one that tears apart those confines almost entirely.
“It unleashed a passion,” Rahim says of the film’s initial reaction. “It’s the first time I experienced a screening that polarized the audience like that. But that’s the game. I accept it, but it’s interesting to see that there wasn’t any gray line.”
The intensity of the response to Alpha is a reason enough to see it—because you might not vibe with it, or you might think it’s a thoughtful and singular work of art. Here’s my review, and here are some more questions for Tahar Rahim.
Douglas Greenwood: Julia DuCournau’s films are famously visceral. What’s your gnarliest injury?
Tahar Rahim: I’ve never had one, thankfully. I’ve had a lot of sprains, but I’ve never broken a bone.
Does perfection exist?
Nope. Actually, perfection is God.
What’s something that’s impressed you recently?
I have 4 kids, and how fast they pick up things is always fascinating. The way they adapt. It’s funny: we say kids and old people as if they were different humans. We were kids, and hopefully we’ll be old people too.
Do you speak to strangers?
I like to do it in foreign countries, because they don’t know who I am. A random encounter at a bar or something. It’s one of the richest things we have: To share the vision of life with someone you don’t know. When I was a teenager, I used to sit down with homeless people and just talk. I did it again when I was preparing to play Malik, [a petty criminal] in A Prophet.
What’s your niche interest?
Astronomy. I have a telescope, but I don’t know how to use it. It doesn’t matter—I just look up and see the wonder. It’s so fascinating and scary at the same time.
Where do you sit in a movie theater?
Right in the middle, where you can feel the audience’s emotions best.
Tell me about your last personal revelation.
I don’t know if I can call it a revelation, but Alpha opened my eyes to what we really don’t need. So many things have changed into “needs,” like spending so much time on your phone. Being bored is a vision, you know? Because finally, when you don’t do anything, you do something—if you want to use it cleverly. You just need what you need to eat, to breathe, and to spend time with the people you love. The rest isn’t really important.
‘Alpha’ is in UK cinemas now, and will be released in the US in 2026.