Interview with the actress Yasmine Al Massri, starring in the film Refugee, nominated for the Oscars

It’s one of the highlights of my entire career, after Caramel that was made by my friend Nadine Labaki. Julian Schnabel, who I am proud to call a friend as well, is an amazing artist - one of very few people in Hollywood who sees filmmaking as an art. I learned a lot about myself as an actor doing Miral, and as a woman. I was very young and very unexperienced, and I was raw, unaware of what it meant to be on a Hollywood set. Julian never made me feel that I needed to step out of who I am and my rawness in order to create my art. I think that was and will always be the best thing about working with him. He let me be, and he let me use my own tools as a dancer to get to my characters emotions. I wish I had met Vanessa Redgrave. She is a role model to me as a woman, and a human rights activist, from a time where women in Hollywood were not allowed to have a political opinion about anything more than their fashion. Vanessa was a little sick when she shot Miral, so she was brought into Jerusalem and out in three days. Hopefully, we will meet one day soon.