About Leyla

I have always had an overactive imagination. As a child I remember outside playtime at my daycare was always my favorite. This was when I could let my imagination truly run wild. Everyone would think we are playing cops and robbers; meanwhile, I’ve created an entire backstory for myself and why I became a cop or robber (whatever that day had in store for me). What did I do to get myself here? Am I doing this out of necessity? Is what I’m doing to help my family? These are the questions my five-year-old self thought on the playground. I have a distinct memory of “playing house” one day; the play structure was our house and this boy named Austin was playing my brother. Austin told me that he needed to go outside to get something, and he left our “house.” I remember looking down at him as he threw himself to the ground and the guttural scream of “Austin! Austin!” that came out of my mouth next. Now, it is important to note that Austin’s mother worked at this daycare, so when she heard me shout, she went sprinting over to him to make sure that he was okay. When she gets to him and realizes that he is perfectly fine, she puts me in a time-out for scaring her and tells me I can’t yell like that because people will think something is wrong. Now, in my little head, I’m thinking, well, we were in the middle of an apocalypse where you can’t go outside, because if you go outside, you die. And Austin, my brother in this world, went outside. What else would be the appropriate response? I didn’t know it yet, but I was meant to be an actor.
My parents, on the other hand, recognized the potential in my imagination very early on. My Dad brought me to my first-ever audition when I was five; it was for Little Ti Moune. I was up against two other little girls. And. I. Was. Terrified. All I had to do was sing “Happy Birthday” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but I simply could not. After my Dad tried to bribe me with everything under the sun to get me up on stage and me crying in a corner with stage fright, we went home. But somehow, my ass ended up in that show anyways… along with the two other girls who actually sang. My intuition tells me that the conversation I witnessed between my Dad and the Director had something to do with it. Once in the production, OH MY GOD, did I love it! Not just because I was the baby of the cast (though that did have its perks) but because I was finally able to live out these dramatic moments that had previously only been allowed to bounce around in my head. After that, I was hooked. 
 It is important to note that there were some detours and roadblocks between that moment and where I am today. The highlights being: at seven years old, cutting my doll’s hair thinking that I’d become a hairstylist; at thirteen years old, thinking that I wanted to go to the Tokyo Olympics as a long jumper for the USA Track and Field Team; and seventeen years old thinking that the global pandemic would only last two weeks. Many mutilated dolls, track meets, performances, and college auditions later, I found myself a First-Year at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama *que glowing gold light and “Ahhhh!” track* (my thoughts when finding out I got in). 
Anywayyyys…I digress. It was here that I began really thinking about what I wanted to do with this passion. What type of work do I want to be doing? What do I want my work to say about me, not only as an actor but as a person? I know that as I grow and change, the answers will grow and change with me. But for now, my answer is that I want to be doing work that makes people think and reflect. Think about themselves, think about their relationships, think about the way our world works. Whether it be a satirical commentary on economic classes, an exploration of POC familial bonds and how they deal with a complicated tragedy, or a social commentary on Gen Z’s use of social media and how it has, in a way, minimized/ conceptualized our existence. Whatever the story is, I am here for it! I want my work to show how dedicated I am to showing a truthfulness toward the human experience in as many ways as possible. Also, as a proud multi-racial, Black American and Egyptian woman, I can’t wait to be the face on the screen when a young girl shouts, “Mom, she looks like me!” and thinks to herself that she wants to do what I do.
I have always had an overactive imagination. But, I am finally at a point in my life where I can admit that my imagination is one of my best qualities, and because of that, I can confidently say that I am and will always be an actor.