Carmen Lebbos

Carmen Lebbos (Arabic: كارمن لبّس‎, born 1963) is a Lebanese actress who has been working in film, television and the theater since 1981. She has been in several television series including Esma lah and will appear in the leading role this fall in The teacher’s daughter. She also appeared in Ziad Doueiri’s West Beirut.

Carmen Elias Lebbos was born in Beirut; to a working-class modest living family,she had early ambitions to be in show business. At the age of 12, she had the opportunity to become a dancer in a troupe (in view of her height 1m. 73 cm), but this move was forbidden by her strict father. At the age of 14, she ran away from home to get married, but later returned to Beirut with her one-year-old baby after she realized it was a mistake and felt trapped in the marriage. Aged sixteen, she wanted to join the Academy of Arts to study acting, and hoped to meet Ziad Rahbani, from whom she would learn many of her acting techniques. Lebbos would be involved in a 15-year romantic relationship with Ziad Rahbani (after his separation & divorce from his estranged ex-wife Dalal Karam)but Lebbos broke it off after realizing Rahabani couldn't provide her with the stability she wanted.In one of her rare interviews, in which she accepted to talk about her relationship with Ziad, Carmen maintained that Ziad, a controversial figure who has invited praise and criticism alike, was simply the man she once loved... she then added "never, during all the 15 years of being together 24 hours a day, did I regard Ziad in the light other people saw him in. To me he was the man I loved and lived with and drank coffee with every morning... And that is that.” Her first actual mentor was Yaacoub Chedrawi, who taught her the basics of Theatre.