At the age of three, Summer Bishil and her family moved to Saudi Arabia to live with her father, a player in the kingdom’s burgeoning banking industry. A year later, they relocated to Bahrain where she attended school until she was 14.
Now 20, Bishil is basking in glory in California with a raft of television credits behind her, two feature films set to be released this year, and a photo shoot in Vanity Fair.
For any frustrated thespian growing up as an expat in the Gulf, Bishil is proof that dreams can come true.
Bishil is set to leap from precocious children’s television actress to Hollywood A-lister with the release of Towelhead, a controversial film that tracks a mixed American and Arabic family living in suburban Texas during the 1991 Gulf war.
Bishil is already being spoken about as a potential Oscar nominee for her performance as a 13-year old girl confusingly thrown into a world of sexual abuse, racial tension and family breakdown.
Towelhead has already been screened at several film festivals and will go on general release this summer. Release dates for the Middle East are not yet available.
Follow us on
