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 Beyrouth. and Zozo.

Biography

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 and 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 Rahbani, Carmen maintained that he was simply the man she once loved, adding that "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. At the end of the 1980s, she travelled to Paris to deepen her knowledge but found it impossible to live there with her son. So she attended intensive courses at the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1989, followed by cinematography courses at Oxford in 1990 and the School of Theater and Cinema (Paris) in 2003.
She is now a Board Member of Actors Syndicate since 2005.
She played with Laura Ramsey a major role in Whatever Lola Wants directed by Nabil Ayouch, where she plays the role of a famous forgotten Egyptian dancer called Ismahan.


Awards
Best Lebanese actress 2008 by Murex D'or
Appreciation by Golden Fenec in Algeria - 2008
Best Lebanese Actress in 2005/2006
Certificate of appreciation for “A Hero from the South” - 2002
Best Lebanese Actress in 2000/2001
Best Lebanese Actress 2013, Murex D'or
Festivals
She has Attended many Festivals and was a member of the Jury in:


49eme festival de television de Monte Carlo
Dubai International film festival 2008
Damascus film festival in 2008
Egypt film festival in 2005.