PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRAD TORCHIA, STYLING BY ASHLEY WESTON, GROOMING BY RACHEL BURNEY, LOCATION: PALIHOUSE WEST HOLLYWOOD
PAST
Mena Massoud moved from Cairo to Toronto with his family in the mid-1990s and, like many immigrant children, felt pressure to excel academically—in his case, by studying neuroscience. “I think I was doing neuroscience for my parents,” he says. He dropped out to pursue acting, however, and quickly began to land roles on Canadian TV. His American breakthrough came last year on Amazon Prime’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, playing a CIA analyst opposite John Krasinski. “I had just finished bingeing The Office,” Massoud recalls. “I think the universe sensed me seeing his face every day.”
PRESENT
Now the 27-year-old actor is starring as the title character in the live-action adaptation of Aladdin, alongside Will Smith, who is taking on the frenetic genie character made famous by Robin Williams. (“He’s everything you hope a superstar would be,” Massoud says of Smith.) Massoud won the role after Disney put out a rare open casting call, following up on a promise the company made to avoid whitewashing the story. “I watched Aladdin a lot growing up,” he says, “because it was one of the few animated films that I could relate to, with a character that looked like me.”
FUTURE
Massoud trades in his crown for grittier fare later this year with the Hulu revenge thriller series Reprisal and the feature film Run This Town. The latter, which premiered at SXSW in March, tells the story of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford (Damian Lewis) and his crack-smoking scandal through the eyes of his staffers (Massoud and Nina Dobrev) and a news reporter (Ben Platt). “Getting to do a film about [Ford] after having lived through that experience was kind of surreal,” Massoud says. “Anytime I can give back to Toronto and tell a Toronto story, I love to do it.”
